Beauty XXV
And a poet said, "Speak to us of Beauty."
Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide?
And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech?
The aggrieved and the injured say, "Beauty is kind and gentle.
Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us."
And the passionate say, "Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread.
Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us."
The tired and the weary say, "beauty is of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit.
Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow."
But the restless say, "We have heard her shouting among the mountains,
And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions."
At night the watchmen of the city say, "Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east."
And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say, "we have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset."
In winter say the snow-bound, "She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills."
And in the summer heat the reapers say, "We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair."
All these things have you said of beauty.
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden forever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight.
People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
Khalil Gibran
Freedom XIV
And an orator said, "Speak to us of Freedom."
And he answered:
At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.
Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.
And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.
You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour?
In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle the eyes.
And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free?
If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written with your own hand upon your own forehead.
You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the foreheads of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them.
And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.
For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their won pride?
And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you.
And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.
Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape.
These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.
And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.
And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.
Khalil Gibran
Friendship IXX
And a youth said, "Speak to us of Friendship."
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.
And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
Khalil Gibran
Joy and Sorrow chapter VIII
Then a woman said, "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow."
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.
Khalil Gibran
Peace XVIII
The tempest calmed after bending the branches of the trees and leaning heavily upon the grain in the field. The stars appeared as broken remnants of lightning, but now silence prevailed over all, as if Nature's war had never been fought.
At that hour a young woman entered her chamber and knelt by her bed sobbing bitterly. Her heart flamed with agony but she could finally open her lips and say, "Oh Lord, bring him home safely to me. I have exhausted my tears and can offer no more, oh Lord, full of love and mercy. My patience is drained and calamity is seeking possession of my heart. Save him, oh Lord, from the iron paws of War; deliver him from such unmerciful Death, for he is weak, governed by the strong. Oh Lord, save my beloved, who is Thine own son, from the foe, who is Thy foe. Keep him from the forced pathway to Death's door; let him see me, or come and take me to him."
Quietly a young man entered. His head was wrapped in bandage soaked with escaping life.
He approached he with a greeting of tears and laughter, then took her hand and placed against it his flaming lips. And with a voice with bespoke past sorrow, and joy of union, and uncertainty of her reaction, he said, "Fear me not, for I am the object of your plea. Be glad, for Peace has carried me back safely to you, and humanity has restored what greed essayed to take from us. Be not sad, but smile, my beloved. Do not express bewilderment, for Love has power that dispels Death; charm that conquers the enemy. I am your one. Think me not a specter emerging from the House of Death to visit your Home of Beauty.
"Do not be frightened, for I am now Truth, spared from swords and fire to reveal to the people the triumph of Love over War. I am Word uttering introduction to the play of happiness and peace."
Then the young man became speechless and his tears spoke the language of the heart; and the angels of Joy hovered about that dwelling, and the two hearts restored the singleness which had been taken from them.
At dawn the two stood in the middle of the field contemplating the beauty of Nature injured by the tempest. After a deep and comforting silence, the soldier said to his sweetheart, "Look at the Darkness, giving birth to the Sun."
Khalil Gibran
Pleasure XXIV
Then a hermit, who visited the city once a year, came forth and said, "Speak to us of Pleasure."
And he answered, saying:
Pleasure is a freedom song,
But it is not freedom.
It is the blossoming of your desires,
But it is not their fruit.
It is a depth calling unto a height,
But it is not the deep nor the high.
It is the caged taking wing,
But it is not space encompassed.
Ay, in very truth, pleasure is a freedom-song.
And I fain would have you sing it with fullness of heart; yet I would not have you lose your hearts in the singing.
Some of your youth seek pleasure as if it were all, and they are judged and rebuked.
I would not judge nor rebuke them. I would have them seek.
For they shall find pleasure, but not her alone:
Seven are her sisters, and the least of them is more beautiful than pleasure.
Have you not heard of the man who was digging in the earth for roots and found a treasure?
And some of your elders remember pleasures with regret like wrongs committed in drunkenness.
But regret is the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement.
They should remember their pleasures with gratitude, as they would the harvest of a summer.
Yet if it comforts them to regret, let them be comforted.
And there are among you those who are neither young to seek nor old to remember;
And in their fear of seeking and remembering they shun all pleasures, lest they neglect the spirit or offend against it.
But even in their foregoing is their pleasure.
And thus they too find a treasure though they dig for roots with quivering hands.
But tell me, who is he that can offend the spirit?
Shall the nightingale offend the stillness of the night, or the firefly the stars?
And shall your flame or your smoke burden the wind?
Think you the spirit is a still pool which you can trouble with a staff?
Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure you do but store the desire in the recesses of your being.
Who knows but that which seems omitted today, waits for tomorrow?
Even your body knows its heritage and its rightful need and will not be deceived.
And your body is the harp of your soul,
And it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds.
And now you ask in your heart, "How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?"
Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.
People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees.
Khalil Gibran
Viser innlegg med etiketten Dikt. Vis alle innlegg
Viser innlegg med etiketten Dikt. Vis alle innlegg
tirsdag 21. oktober 2008
Khalil Gibran (1883 - 1931) a beloved poet from Lebanon
Biography of Khalil Gibran
Gibran Khalil Gibran was born on January 6, 1883, to the Maronite family of Gibran in Bsharri, a mountainous area in Northern Lebanon.
Lebanon was a Turkish province part of Greater Syria (Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine) and subjugated to Ottoman dominion, which granted the Mount Lebanon area autonomous rule. The people of Mount Lebanon had struggled for several years to gain independence from the Ottoman rule, a cause Gibran was later to adopt and become an active member in. The Mount Lebanon area was a troubled region, due to the various outside and foreign interferences that fostered religious hatred between the Christian, especially the Maronite sect, and Moslem populations. Later in his life, Gibran was to seek and unite the various religious sects, in a bid to abolish the religious snobbery, persecution and atrocities witnessed at his time. The Maronite sect, formed during the schism in the Byzantine church in the 5th century A.D., was made up of a group of Syrian Christians, who joined the monk St. Marun to lead their own sectarian thought.
His mother Kamila Rahmeh was thirty when she begot Gibran from her third husband Khalil Gibran, who proved to be an irresponsible husband leading the family to poverty. Gibran had a half-brother six years older than him called Peter and two younger sisters, Mariana and Sultana, whom he was deeply attached to throughout his life, along with his mother. Kamila’s family came from a prestigious religious background, which imbued the uneducated mother with a strong will and later on helped her raise up the family on her own in the U.S.
Growing up in the lush region of Bsharri, Gibran proved to be a solitary and pensive child who relished the natural surroundings of the cascading falls, the rugged cliffs and the neighboring green cedars, the beauty of which emerged as a dramatic and symbolic influence to his drawings and writings. Being laden with poverty, he did not receive any formal education or learning, which was limited to regular visits to a village priest who doctrined him with the essentials of religion and the Bible, alongside Syriac and Arabic languages. Recognizing Gibran’s inquisitive and alert nature, the priest began teaching him the rudiments of alphabet and language, opening up to Gibran the world of history, science, and language. At the age of ten, Gibran fell off a cliff, wounding his left shoulder, which remained weak for the rest of his life ever since this incident. To relocate the shoulder, his family strapped it to a cross and wrapped it up for forty days, a symbolic incident reminiscent of Christ’s wanderings in the wilderness and which remained etched in Gibran’s memory.
At the age of eight, Khalil Gibran, Gibran's father, was accused of tax evasion and was sent to prison as the Ottomon authorities confiscated the Gibrans’ property and left them homeless. The family went to live with relatives for a while; however, the strong-willed mother decided that the family should immigrate to the U.S., seeking a better life and following in suit to Gibran’s uncle who immigrated earlier. The father was released in 1894, but being an irresponsible head of the family he was undecided about immigration and remained behind in Lebanon.
On June 25, 1895, the Gibrans embarked on a voyage to the American shores of New York.
The Gibrans settled in Boston’s South End, which at the time hosted the second largest Syrian community in the U.S. following New York. The culturally diverse area felt familiar to Kamila, who was comforted by the familiar spoken Arabic, and the widespread Arab customs. Kamila, now the bread-earner of the family, began to work as a peddler on the impoverished streets of South End Boston. At the time, peddling was the major source of income for most Syrian immigrants, who were negatively portrayed due to their unconventional Arab ways and their supposed idleness.
Growing up into another impoverished period, Gibran was to recall the pain of the first few years, which left an indelible mark on his life and prompted him to reinvent his childhood memories, dispelling the filth, the poverty and the slurs. However, the work of charity institutions in the poor immigrant areas allowed the children of immigrants to attend public schools and keep them off the street, and Gibran was the only member of his family to pursue scholastic education. His sisters were not allowed to enter school, thwarted by Middle Eastern traditions as well as financial difficulties. Later on in his life, Gibran was to champion the cause of women’s emancipation and education and surround himself with strong-willed, intellectual and independent women.
In the school, a registration mistake altered his name forever by shortening it to Kahlil Gibran, which remained unchanged till the rest of his life despite repeated attempts at restoring his full name. Gibran entered school on September 30, 1895, merely two months after his arrival in the U.S. Having no formal education, he was placed in an ungraded class reserved for immigrant children, who had to learn English from scratch. Gibran caught the eye of his teachers with his sketches and drawings, a hobby he had started during his childhood in Lebanon.
With Kamila’s hard work, the family’s financial standing improved as her savings allowed Peter to set up a goods store, in which both of Gibran's sisters worked. The financial strains of the family and the distance from home brought the family together, with Kamila providing both financial and emotional support to her children, especially to her introverted son Gibran. During this difficult period, Gibran's remoteness from social life and his pensive nature were deepened, and Kamila was there to help him overcome his reservedness. The mother’s independence allowed him to mingle with Boston’s social life and explore its thriving world of art and literature.
Gibran's curiosity led him to the cultural side of Boston, which exposed him to the rich world of the theatre, Opera and artistic Galleries. Prodded by the cultural scenes around him and through his artistic drawings, Gibran caught the attention of his teachers at the public school, who saw an artistic future for the Syrian boy. They contacted Fred Holland Day, an artist and a supporter of artists who opened up Gibran’s cultural world and set him on the road to artistic fame.
Gibran met Fred Holland Day in 1896, and from then his road to recognition was reached through Day’s artistic unconventionality and his contacts in Boston’s artistic circles. Day introduced Gibran to Greek mythology, world literature, contemporary writings and photography, ever prodding the inquisitive Syrian to seek self-expression. Day’s liberal education and unconventional artistic exploration influenced Gibran, who was to follow Day’s unfettered adoption of the unusual for the sake of originality and self-actualization. Other than working on Gibran’s education, Day was instrumental in lifting his self-esteem, which had suffered under the immigrant treatment and poverty of the times. Not surprisingly, Gibran emerged as a fast learner, devouring everything handed over by Day, despite weak Arabic and English. Under Day’s tutelage, Gibran uttered his first religious beliefs, when he declared "I am no longer a Catholic: I am a pagan," after reading one book given by Day.
During one of Fred Holland Day’s art exhibitions, Gibran drew a sketch of a certain Miss Josephine Peabody, an unknown poet and writer who was to later become one of his failed love experiences; later on, Gibran was to propose marriage and be met with refusal, the first blow in a series of heartaches dealt to Gibran by the women he loved.
Continually encouraging Gibran to improve his drawings and sketches, Day was instrumental in getting Gibran’s images printed as cover designs for books in 1898. At the time, Gibran began to develop his own technique and style, encouraged by Day’s enthusiasm and support. Gradually, Gibran entered the Bostonian circles and his artistic talents brought him fame at an early age. However, his family decided that early success could cause him future problems, and with Gibran’s approval, the young artist went back to Lebanon to finish his education and learn Arabic.
In 1898, Gibran arrived in Beirut speaking poor English and even little Arabic; he could speak Arabic fluently, but not read nor write it. To improve his Arabic, Gibran chose to enroll in the school Madrasat-al-Hikmah, a Maronite-founded school which offered a nationalistic curriculum partial to church writings, history and liturgy. Gibran’s strong-willed nature refused to abide by the parochial curriculum, demanding an individual curriculum catering to his educational needs and aimed at a college level, a gesture indicative of Gibran’s rebellious and individualistic nature; his arrogance bordered on heresy. Nonetheless, the school acquiesced to his request, editing course material to Gibran's liking. He chose to immerse himself in the Arabic-language bible, intrigued by its style and writing, features of which echo in his various works. As a student, Gibran left a great impression on his teachers and fellow students, who were impressed with his outlandish and individualistic behavior, self-confidence, and his unconventional long hair. His Arabic teacher saw in him "a loving but controlled heart, an impetuous soul, a rebellious mind, an eye mocking everything it sees". However, the school’s strict and disciplined atmosphere was not to Gibran’s liking, who flagrantly flouted religious duties, skipped classes and drew sketches on books. At the school, Gibran met Joseph Hawaiik, with whom he started a magazine called al-Manarah (the Beacon), both editing while Gibran illustrated.
Meanwhile, Josephine Peabody, the twenty-four year old Bostonian beauty who caught Gibran’s attention during one of Day’s exhibitions, was intrigued by the young Syrian artist who dedicated a sketch to her, and began corresponding with Gibran throughout his stay in Lebanon. Soon, he became romantically involved with Josephine, and they kept exchanging letters until the relationship fell apart, following the rebuffal of Gibran’s marriage proposal and Josephine’s eventual marriage in 1906.
Gibran finished college in 1902, learning Arabic and French and excelling in his studies, especially poetry. Meanwhile, his relationship with his father became strained over Gibran’s advanced erudition, driving him to move in with his cousin and to live an impoverished life he detested and was ashamed of until the rest of his life. The poverty in Lebanon was compounded with news of illness striking his family, with his half-brother's consumption, his sister Sultana’s intestinal trouble and his mother’s developing cancer. Upon receiving news of Sultana’s dire illness, Gibran left Lebanon in March of 1902.
To his misfortune, Gibran arrived too late; Sultana died at the age of fourteen on April 4th 1902, the first in a series of three family deaths which will fall upon him in the coming months. Gibran was very fond of his sisters and of his family as a whole. At the time of mourning, both Day and Josephine provided distractions for him, in form of artistic shows and meetings at Boston’s artistic circles. Gibran’s artistic talents and unique behavior had captured earlier the interest of the Bostonian society, which welcomed this foreign talent into their artistic circles.
Josephine, who slowly captured Gibran’s heart, became an inflectional person in his life, the Bostonian poet constantly referring to Gibran as ‘her young prophet’. Greatly intrigued by his oriental background, Josephine was charmed by Gibran’s vividly illustrated correspondences and conversations. Josephine’s care and attention were the inspiration behind his book The Prophet, the title of which is based on an eleven-stanza poem Joesphine wrote in December of 1902 describing Gibran’s life in Bsharri as she envisaged it. Later on, when Gibran was to publish The Prophet, he dedicated it to Josephine, whose care and tenderness helped him advance his career.
Illness struck again when his mother underwent an operation in February to remove a cancerous tumor. To compound his misery, Gibran was forced to take on the family business and run the goods store, which was abandoned by his half-brother Peter to pursue his fortune in Cuba. This new burden weighed on Gibran’s spirit, depriving him from dedicating his time to artistic pursuits. During this time, Gibran tried to shy away from the house, to escape the atmosphere of death, poverty and illness. In the following month, Peter returned to Boston from Cuba fatally sick only to die days later on March 12 of consumption. His mother’s cancer continued to spread and she died later that year on June 28, a scene which left Gibran fainting and foaming blood from the mouth.
Following the three family deaths, Gibran sold out the family business and began immersing himself in improving both his Arabic and English writings, a twin task which he was to pursue for the rest of his life. Meanwhile, Day and Josephine were helping him launch his debut art exhibition, which was to feature his allegorical and symbolic charcoal drawings that so fascinated Boston’s society. The exhibition opened on May 3, 1904, and proved a success with the critics. However, the exhibition’s significance lay elsewhere. Josephine, through her future husband, invited a schoolmistress called Mary Haskell to examine Gibran’s drawings. This introduction to the schoolmistress was to mark the beginning of a lifetime relationship, which would greatly influence Gibran’s writing career. Gibran had sought Josephine’s opinion about his Arabic writings, translating them into English. With the language barrier, Josephine could only provide criticism over ideas and thoughts, leaving Gibran alone to tackle his linguistic problems. Josephine’s role was to be taken over by Mary Haskell.
Mary Haskell, who was thirty at the time and ten years older than Gibran, will go on to finance Gibran’s artistic development and encourage him to become the artist that he aspired to be. As a school head mistress, Haskell was an educated, strong-willed and independent woman and an active champion of women’s liberation, who was set apart to Josephine Peabody’s romantic nature. Mary was the reason behind Gibran’s decision to explore writing in English, as she persuaded Gibran to refrain from translating his Arabic works to English and concentrate instead on writing in English directly. Mary’s collaboration and editing of his various English works polished Gibran’s work, most of which first underwent Mary’s editing before going to the publishers. She would spend hours with Gibran, going over his wording, correcting his mistakes and suggesting new ideas to his writings. She even attempted learning Arabic to gain a better grasp of Gibran’s language and his thoughts.
The significance of Mary’s relationship with Gibran is revealed through her diaries, in which she recorded Gibran’s artistic development, their personal and intellectual conversations and his innermost thoughts for nearly seventeen years and a half. These recordings have provided critics with valuable insight into Gibran’s personal thoughts and ideas, which he kept away from the public eye.
In 1904, Gibran started to contribute articles to the Arabic-speaking émigré newspaper called Al-Mouhajer (The Emigrant), marking his first published written work. His first publication was called ‘Vision’, a romantic essay that portrayed a caged bird amid an abundance of symbolism. Despite spending four years in Lebanon learning Arabic, Gibran’s written Arabic left something to be desired. To master Arabic, Gibran relied on his ear for capturing traditional vocabulary, depending heavily on the Arabic stories narrated in his hometown of Bsharri. Hence his Arabic writing had a colloquial feel to it, which was comfortable to his audiences. According to Gibran, rules of language were meant to be broken and he went on to advocate Arab émigré writers to break out of tradition and seek an individual style. Throughout his life, Gibran’s Arabic writings did not receive the critical acclaim his English books had, leading him later on to concentrate on his English writings and abandon the cause of improving his Arabic style.
Gibran’s first Arabic written work came out in 1905 with the publication of Nubthah fi Fan Al-Musiqa (Music), a book inspired by his brother’s 'oud playing and Day’s several invitations to the Opera. During that year, Gibran started a column in Al-Mohajer called ‘Tears and Laughter’’, which was to form the basis of his book A Tear and a Smile. While writing in Al-Mohajer, a certain Arabic émigré writer called Ameen Rihani, wrote to the magazine lauding Gibran’s article which attacked contemporary Arab writers for imitating traditional writers and using poetry for financial gain. Rihani was to become an important Arabic writer and a friend of Gibran’s, whom he later left for the life-long friendship of Mikhail Naimy. At the time, Gibran published several Arabic poems and wrote in newspapers, about various subjects relating to love, truth, beauty, death, good and evil. Most of his writings had a romantic edge to them, with bitter and ironic tones.
In 1906, Gibran published his second Arabic book called Arayis Al- Muruj (The Nymphs of the Valley), a collection of three allegories which take place in Northern Lebanon. The allegories- ‘Martha’, ‘Yuhanna the Mad’, and ‘Dust of Ages and the Eternal Fire’- dealt with issues relating to prostitution, religious persecution, reincarnation and pre-ordained love. The allegories were heavily influenced by the stories he heard back in Bsharri and his own fascination with the Bible, the mystical, and the nature of love. Gibran was to return to the subject of madness in his English book ‘The Madman,’ whose beginnings can be traced to Gibran’s early Arabic writings. What characterized Gibran’s early Arabic publications was the use of the ironic, the realism of the stories, the portrayal of second-class citizens and the anti-religious tone, all of which contrasted with the formalistic and traditional Arabic writings.
Gibran published his third Arabic book Al-Arwah Al-Mutamarridah (Spirits Rebellious) in March of 1908, a collection of four narrative writings based on his writing in Al-Mouhajer. The book dealt with social issues in Lebanon, portraying a married woman’s emancipation from her husband, a heretic’s call for freedom, a bride’s escape from an unwanted marriage through death and the brutal injustices of 19th century Lebanese feudal lords. These writings received strong criticism from the clergy for their bold ideas, their negative portrayal of clergymen and their encouragement of women’s liberation. Gibran was to later recall to Mary the dark period in which Spirits Rebellious was written, during a time when he was haunted by death, illness and loss of love. The anti-clerical content of the book threatened Gibran with excommunication from the church, with the book being censored by the Syrian government.
During one of Gibran's art exhibitions in 1914, an American architect, Albert Pinkam Ryder, paid an unexpected visit to the exhibition, leaving an impression on Gibran who decided to write an English poem in his honor. The poem, which was first edited by Mary, became Gibran’s first English publication, when it went out into print in January 1915.
Meanwhile, Gibran became more actively involved in the politics of the day, especially with the onset of World War I. To Gibran, the war suggested hope of liberating Ottoman-ruled Syria, through a united Arab military front, aided by a general Allied attack. He called on both Muslim and Christian sides to unite their forces against the oppressive Ottoman hegemony. In fact, Gibran fantasized about becoming a fighter and a romantic political hero, who is able to lead his country to liberation. When he actually suggested to Mary going over to Lebanon to fill a post of fighter, she adamantly refused.
In 1915, the pain he had suffered in his shoulder when he was young began to come back, and he underwent electrical treatment on his left shoulder, which had remained weak and in quasi-paralyzed state following the childhood accident. During the war years, Gibran went into a depression that distracted his thoughts and debilitated his health. Despite his active and widespread writings about the Arab uprising against the Ottomans, Giban felt helpless, contributing whatever money he spared to his starving Syria. To distract himself from war thoughts, Gibran tried to seek further recognition in New York, boosting his social life and joining in 1916 the literary magazine The Seven Arts. Gibran prided himself in being the first immigrant to join the board of this magazine, which reflected Gibran’s literary style. At the time, Gibran’s presence began to be demanded in literary circles, who craved to hear recitations from his books and writings.
By 1918, Gibran began to tell Mary of an Arabic work he had been working on which he called ‘my island man,’ the seeds of his most famous book The Prophet. Based on a Promethean man’s exile to an island, The Prophet evoked the journey of the banished man called Al Mustafa, or the Chosen One. In her diary, Mary recounted Gibran’s musings about the book, which he later called ‘the first book in my career –my first real book, my ripened fruit." Soon Gibran added to the work the title of the Commonwealth, a separate work he had attached to the story of Al Mustafa. Gibran was to later link the seeds of The Prophet to an Arabic work he did when he was sixteen years old, where a man at an inn discusses with the rest of the attendants various subjects. However, Gibran still worried about his English writing and he sought Mary’s advice constantly. Gibran had always been fascinated by the language of the Syriac Bible, which reflected Gibran’s views on the creation of ‘an absolute language’, a task he tried to achieve through his various English writings, through the creation of a unified universal style.
Mary was crucial to the development of The Prophet, for she advised Gibran to adopt the English language for this book. Gibran was further encouraged to pursue writing in English following the attention given to his soon-to-be-published book The Madman. The conversation Gibran had with Mary over the issues of marriage, life, death, love…infiltrated his chapters in The Prophet and various other works. However, Mary was against the title of The Prophet, which Gibran came up with in 1919, preferring the title ‘The Counsels,’ the name which she continued to use after the publication of the book. By the fall of 1918, Gibran was preparing to publish his first English book, and another Arabic poem called ‘Al-Mawakib’ (The Processions), his first serious attempt at writing a traditional Arabic poem with rhyme and meter.
Gibran's first English book The Madman came out in 1918 and received good reviews from the local press, who compared him to the Indian writer Tagore, famous for bridging the gap between East and West, and the English poet William Blake. The Madman, a collection of parables which was illustrated by Gibran, revealed the influence of Nietzsche, Jung and Tagore. Following the success of The Madman, Gibran’s popularity began to soar and gradually Gibran started losing touch with his old acquaintances, Day, Josephine, and now he dissolved his relationship with Rihani. Gibran relished the aura of mystery which he evoked among people, given his undisclosed accounts of his oriental background and his personal reserve.
In 1919, Gibran published his Arabic poem ‘Al-Mawakib’, which received little success from the Arab press. During the same year, Gibran joined the board of yet another local magazine Fatat Boston, to which he contributed several Arabic articles. Throughout his life, Gibran joined societies and magazines such as Al-Mouhajer, Al-Funnon, The Golden Links Society and Fatat-Boston, in order to create a mouthpiece for avant-garde Arabic writing and unite Arabic literature abroad. However, Gibran’s success as an Arabic writer remained limited. Ironically, his Arabic language was still not up to standards and received little success in the Arabic press.
In Fatat-Boston, Gibran developed a close relationship with an Arab immigrant writer Mikhail Naimy, whom he had met earlier in 1914. Naimy, a critical thinker at the time, was among the first Arab writers to acknowledge Gibran’s efforts at advancing the Arab language, and correctly making use of Arab customs and background. He treated Gibran’s The Broken Wings as an example of the universal language of literature, pointing out that Selma Karameh could have easily come from a Russian, English or Italian background. However, following Gibran’s death, Naimy immortalized Gibran, replacing the man with a godly image.
With Naimy, Gibran formed in April of 1911 a ten-member Arab émigré organization called Arrabitah Al-Qalamyiah, which promoted the publication of Arab writings and the transmission of world literature. Throughout its life, Arrabitah was led by Gibran’s call for greater artistic freedom, ever encouraging writers to break the rules and seek individual styles. During the time, Gibran’s involvement in his Arabic writings distracted him from completing The Prophet for a while. Moreover, Gibran vacillated between resuming work on The Prophet or embarking on a lecture tour, as his spreading popularity demanded more artistic presence from him. However, he continued to view himself as a spokesman of both the Arab and English worlds, a role whose difficulty he admitted.
Meanwhile, Gibran's political ideas were incensing local politicians in Syria, who reacted against his article which stated ‘You have your Lebanon and I have my Lebanon.’ Gibran disapproved of the way the Syrian territories were being managed, and he wrote extensively on the identity of the emerging Arab countries, as the Greater Syria region began to be divided into Lebanon, Palestine and Syria. On the makeup of emerging countries, Gibran called on politicians to adopt the positive aspects of the Western culture and refrain from importing the surface values of guns and clothes. His political thought sooner gave way to a general view on the cultural makeup of countries and the way citizens ought to lead their lives.
By 1920, nearly three-quarters of The Prophet was done while Gibran’s Arab writings continued to occupy his time. In a poignant letter written to Mary, Gibran confessed that he has resolved the identity problem and has balanced the East and West influences, admitting that "I know now that I am a part of the whole -- a fragment of a jar.… Now I've found out where I fit, and in a way I am the jar -- and the jar is I."
In 1922, Gibran started to complain about heart trouble, which was later attributed to his nervous psychological state, and he personally admitted: "But my greatest pain is not physical. There’s something big in me…. I've always known it and I can’t get it out. It’s a silent greater self, sitting watching a smaller somebody in me do all sorts of things.’’ With the near compellation of work on The Prophet, Mary and Gibran acknowledged Nietzsche’s great influence on the book, which is reminiscent of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Mary had advised Gibran about the style of The Prophet, covering issues such as the use of capitalization, the use of punctuation marks and the form of paragraphs. Gibran had insisted that he wanted his paragraphs to remain short, almost becoming one lines. Mary had always pointed out that Gibran was a man of few words, who limited his letters to a minimum of words.
A few months before the publication of The Prophet, Gibran summarizeed the book to Mary: "The whole Prophet is saying one thing: ‘you are far far greater than you know -- and all is well.'
By 1923, Gibran had a well-established reputation in the Arab world through his Arabic articles, which he contributed to the various local and émigré Arabic newspapers. During this time, Gibran was gradually depending less on Mary as a financier and editor. He had agreed earlier with Mary to pay off his loans by sending her several of his paintings, an agreement which settled down their quarrels over money. And as Gibran's confidence in his English writings grew, his reliance on Mary's opinion dwindled. However, Mary’s face remained an inspiration in his illustrations, for soon Gibran will decide to restrict his paintings to book illustrations. The Prophet finally came into print in October of 1923, with a modest success in the U.S.
By 1923, Gibran had developed a close correspondence with an Arab writer, May Ziadeh. Their acceptance began in 1912, when she wrote to Gibran recalling to him how moved she was with the story of Selma Karameh in The Broken Wings.
May, an intellectual writer and an active proponent of women’s emancipation, was born in Palestine where she received classical education in a convent school. In 1908she had moved to Cairo where her father started a newspaper. Similar to Gibran, May was fluent in English, Arabic and French, and in 1911 she published her poems under the pseudonym Isis Copia. May found The Broken Wings too liberal for her own tastes, but the subject of women’s rights occupied her until the rest of her life and was a common passion between her and Gibran. Later on, May became a champion of Gibran’s writings and came to replace Mary’s role as an editor and conversant over the coming years. By 1921, Gibran had received her picture and they were to continue corresponding until the end of his life.
During the twenties, Gibran continued to be active in the political arena, writing extensively on the issue of culture and society and the need of the emerging Arab countries to transport the positive sides of Western culture. Gibran’s writings had remained controversial in his home country, especially with his liberal views on the Church and clergy. As a writer, Gibran relished controversy, and his writings reflected this spirit. His limited success in the Arab world drove Gibran to abandon the cause of gaining acceptance as an Arabic writer and he concentrated his efforts instead on writing in English. Slowly, Gibran was getting to grips with his writing, creating a style of language, as he revealed to Mary that he wished to write small unified books, which could be read in one sitting and carried in one’s pocket.
Mary's role in Gibran's writing career was gradually dwindling, but she came to his rescue when he made some bad investments. Mary had always handled Gibran’s financial affairs, ever present to extricate him from his bad financial keeping. However, Mary was about to make her life decision in 1923 by deciding to move into the house of a Southern landowner, to become his future wife in May of 1926. Gibran helped her reach this decision, which slightly clouded their relationship. However, Gibran continued to confide in Mary, and he told her about the second and third parts of The Prophet which he intended to write. The second part was to be called The Garden of the Prophet and it would recount the time the prophet spent in the garden on the island talking to his followers. The third part would be called The Death of the Prophet and it would describe the prophet’s return from the island and how he is imprisoned and freed only to be stoned to death in the market place. Gibran’s project was never to be completed, due to the deterioration of his health and his preoccupation with writing his longest English book, Jesus, The Son of Man.
As Mary slipped slowly out of his life, Gibran hired a new assistant Henrietta Breckenridge, who later played an important role following his death. She organized his works, helped him edit his writings and managed his studio for him. By 1926, Gibran had become a well-known international figure, a stance which was to his liking. Seeking a greater cosmopolitan exposure, Gibran began in 1926 to contribute articles to the quarterly journal The New Orient, which had an international approach encouraging the East and West to meet. At the time, he had started working on a new English work, Lazarus and His Beloved, which was based on an earlier Arabic work. This book was a dramatic collection of four poems recounting the Bible story of Lazarus, his quest for his soul and his eventual meeting of his soul mate.
In May of 1926, Mary married the Southern Landowner Florance Minis. At the time, Mary’s journals reveal Gibran’s perception with the writing of Jesus, The Son of Man. Writing the story of Jesus had been a lifetime ambition, especially the attempt at portraying Jesus as no one else has done before. Gibran had traced Jesus’ life from Syria to Palestine, never sparing a book that recounted his life journey. To Gibran, Jesus appeared as human acting in natural surroundings and he often had dreams about meeting his ideal character in the natural scenery of Bsharri. Gibran’s imagination was further fueled by the native stories he had heard in Lebanon about Jesus’ life and acts. Soon, by January of 1927 Mary was editing the book, for Gibran still relied on Mary’s editing before sending his works to print.
By 1928, Gibran’s health began to deteriorate, and the pain in his body due to his nervous state was on the increase, driving Gibran to seek relief in alcohol. Soon Gibran’s excess drinking turned him into an alcoholic at the height of the prohibition period in the U.S. That same year, Gibran was already thinking of the post-life and he began inquiring about purchasing a monastery in Bsharri, which was owned by Christian Carmelites. In November of 1928, Jesus, Son of Man was published and received good reviews from the local press, who delighted in Gibran’s treatment of Jesus, the Son of Man. By that time, the artistic circles thought it was high time Gibran was honored; by 1929 every possible society sought to give him a tribute. In honor of his literary success, a special anthology of Gibran’s early works was issued by Arrabitah under the title As-Sanabil.
Gibran’s mental health, however, and his alcohol addiction drove him in one evening to burst out crying, lamenting the weakness of his mature works. ‘I have lost my original creative power,’ he lamented to an audience during a reading of one of his mature works. By 1929, doctors were able to trace Gibran’s physical ailment to the enlargement of his livers. To avoid the issue of illness, Gibran ignored all medical care, relying instead on heavy drinking. To distract himself, Gibran turned to an old work about three Earth gods written in 1911. This new book recounts the story of three earth gods who watch the drama of a couple falling in love. Mary edited the book which went into print in mid-March of 1930.
By 1930, Gibran’s excessive drinking to escape the pain in his liver aggravated his disease, and hopes of finishing the second part of The Prophet, The Garden of the Prophet, dwindled. Gibran revealed to Mary his plans of building a library in Bsharri and soon he drew the last copy of his will. To his pen-pal May Ziadeh, Gibran revealed the fear of death as he admitted, ‘I am, May, a small volcano whose opening has been closed.'
On April 10th 1931, Gibran died at the age of forty-eight in a New York hospital, as the spreading cancer in his liver left him unconscious. The New York streets staged a two-day vigil for Gibran’s honor, whose death was mourned in the U.S. and Lebanon. His will left large amounts of money to his country, since he wanted his Syrian citizens to remain in their country and develop it rather than immigrate. Mary, Mariana and Henrietta all attended to Gibran’s studio, organizing his works, sorting out books, illustrations and drawings. To fulfill Gibran’s dream, Marianna and Mary travelled in July of 1931 to Lebanon to bury Gibran in his hometown of Bsharri. The citizens of Lebanon received his coffin with celebration rather than mourning, rejoicing his homecoming, for in death Gibran’s popularity increased. Upon Gibran’s return, The Lebanese Minister of Arts opened the coffins and honored his body with a decoration of Fine Arts. Meanwhile, Marianna and Mary started negotiating the purchase of the Carmelite monastery Gibran wished to obtain. By January of 1932, the Mar Sarkis monastery was bought and Gibran moved to his final resting-place. Upon Mary’s suggestion, his belongings, the books he read, and some of his works and illustrations were later shipped to provide a local collection in the monastery, which turned into a Gibran museum. ..
Kilde (which I hearty recommend ): www.PoemHunter.com
Gibran Khalil Gibran was born on January 6, 1883, to the Maronite family of Gibran in Bsharri, a mountainous area in Northern Lebanon.
Lebanon was a Turkish province part of Greater Syria (Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine) and subjugated to Ottoman dominion, which granted the Mount Lebanon area autonomous rule. The people of Mount Lebanon had struggled for several years to gain independence from the Ottoman rule, a cause Gibran was later to adopt and become an active member in. The Mount Lebanon area was a troubled region, due to the various outside and foreign interferences that fostered religious hatred between the Christian, especially the Maronite sect, and Moslem populations. Later in his life, Gibran was to seek and unite the various religious sects, in a bid to abolish the religious snobbery, persecution and atrocities witnessed at his time. The Maronite sect, formed during the schism in the Byzantine church in the 5th century A.D., was made up of a group of Syrian Christians, who joined the monk St. Marun to lead their own sectarian thought.
His mother Kamila Rahmeh was thirty when she begot Gibran from her third husband Khalil Gibran, who proved to be an irresponsible husband leading the family to poverty. Gibran had a half-brother six years older than him called Peter and two younger sisters, Mariana and Sultana, whom he was deeply attached to throughout his life, along with his mother. Kamila’s family came from a prestigious religious background, which imbued the uneducated mother with a strong will and later on helped her raise up the family on her own in the U.S.
Growing up in the lush region of Bsharri, Gibran proved to be a solitary and pensive child who relished the natural surroundings of the cascading falls, the rugged cliffs and the neighboring green cedars, the beauty of which emerged as a dramatic and symbolic influence to his drawings and writings. Being laden with poverty, he did not receive any formal education or learning, which was limited to regular visits to a village priest who doctrined him with the essentials of religion and the Bible, alongside Syriac and Arabic languages. Recognizing Gibran’s inquisitive and alert nature, the priest began teaching him the rudiments of alphabet and language, opening up to Gibran the world of history, science, and language. At the age of ten, Gibran fell off a cliff, wounding his left shoulder, which remained weak for the rest of his life ever since this incident. To relocate the shoulder, his family strapped it to a cross and wrapped it up for forty days, a symbolic incident reminiscent of Christ’s wanderings in the wilderness and which remained etched in Gibran’s memory.
At the age of eight, Khalil Gibran, Gibran's father, was accused of tax evasion and was sent to prison as the Ottomon authorities confiscated the Gibrans’ property and left them homeless. The family went to live with relatives for a while; however, the strong-willed mother decided that the family should immigrate to the U.S., seeking a better life and following in suit to Gibran’s uncle who immigrated earlier. The father was released in 1894, but being an irresponsible head of the family he was undecided about immigration and remained behind in Lebanon.
On June 25, 1895, the Gibrans embarked on a voyage to the American shores of New York.
The Gibrans settled in Boston’s South End, which at the time hosted the second largest Syrian community in the U.S. following New York. The culturally diverse area felt familiar to Kamila, who was comforted by the familiar spoken Arabic, and the widespread Arab customs. Kamila, now the bread-earner of the family, began to work as a peddler on the impoverished streets of South End Boston. At the time, peddling was the major source of income for most Syrian immigrants, who were negatively portrayed due to their unconventional Arab ways and their supposed idleness.
Growing up into another impoverished period, Gibran was to recall the pain of the first few years, which left an indelible mark on his life and prompted him to reinvent his childhood memories, dispelling the filth, the poverty and the slurs. However, the work of charity institutions in the poor immigrant areas allowed the children of immigrants to attend public schools and keep them off the street, and Gibran was the only member of his family to pursue scholastic education. His sisters were not allowed to enter school, thwarted by Middle Eastern traditions as well as financial difficulties. Later on in his life, Gibran was to champion the cause of women’s emancipation and education and surround himself with strong-willed, intellectual and independent women.
In the school, a registration mistake altered his name forever by shortening it to Kahlil Gibran, which remained unchanged till the rest of his life despite repeated attempts at restoring his full name. Gibran entered school on September 30, 1895, merely two months after his arrival in the U.S. Having no formal education, he was placed in an ungraded class reserved for immigrant children, who had to learn English from scratch. Gibran caught the eye of his teachers with his sketches and drawings, a hobby he had started during his childhood in Lebanon.
With Kamila’s hard work, the family’s financial standing improved as her savings allowed Peter to set up a goods store, in which both of Gibran's sisters worked. The financial strains of the family and the distance from home brought the family together, with Kamila providing both financial and emotional support to her children, especially to her introverted son Gibran. During this difficult period, Gibran's remoteness from social life and his pensive nature were deepened, and Kamila was there to help him overcome his reservedness. The mother’s independence allowed him to mingle with Boston’s social life and explore its thriving world of art and literature.
Gibran's curiosity led him to the cultural side of Boston, which exposed him to the rich world of the theatre, Opera and artistic Galleries. Prodded by the cultural scenes around him and through his artistic drawings, Gibran caught the attention of his teachers at the public school, who saw an artistic future for the Syrian boy. They contacted Fred Holland Day, an artist and a supporter of artists who opened up Gibran’s cultural world and set him on the road to artistic fame.
Gibran met Fred Holland Day in 1896, and from then his road to recognition was reached through Day’s artistic unconventionality and his contacts in Boston’s artistic circles. Day introduced Gibran to Greek mythology, world literature, contemporary writings and photography, ever prodding the inquisitive Syrian to seek self-expression. Day’s liberal education and unconventional artistic exploration influenced Gibran, who was to follow Day’s unfettered adoption of the unusual for the sake of originality and self-actualization. Other than working on Gibran’s education, Day was instrumental in lifting his self-esteem, which had suffered under the immigrant treatment and poverty of the times. Not surprisingly, Gibran emerged as a fast learner, devouring everything handed over by Day, despite weak Arabic and English. Under Day’s tutelage, Gibran uttered his first religious beliefs, when he declared "I am no longer a Catholic: I am a pagan," after reading one book given by Day.
During one of Fred Holland Day’s art exhibitions, Gibran drew a sketch of a certain Miss Josephine Peabody, an unknown poet and writer who was to later become one of his failed love experiences; later on, Gibran was to propose marriage and be met with refusal, the first blow in a series of heartaches dealt to Gibran by the women he loved.
Continually encouraging Gibran to improve his drawings and sketches, Day was instrumental in getting Gibran’s images printed as cover designs for books in 1898. At the time, Gibran began to develop his own technique and style, encouraged by Day’s enthusiasm and support. Gradually, Gibran entered the Bostonian circles and his artistic talents brought him fame at an early age. However, his family decided that early success could cause him future problems, and with Gibran’s approval, the young artist went back to Lebanon to finish his education and learn Arabic.
In 1898, Gibran arrived in Beirut speaking poor English and even little Arabic; he could speak Arabic fluently, but not read nor write it. To improve his Arabic, Gibran chose to enroll in the school Madrasat-al-Hikmah, a Maronite-founded school which offered a nationalistic curriculum partial to church writings, history and liturgy. Gibran’s strong-willed nature refused to abide by the parochial curriculum, demanding an individual curriculum catering to his educational needs and aimed at a college level, a gesture indicative of Gibran’s rebellious and individualistic nature; his arrogance bordered on heresy. Nonetheless, the school acquiesced to his request, editing course material to Gibran's liking. He chose to immerse himself in the Arabic-language bible, intrigued by its style and writing, features of which echo in his various works. As a student, Gibran left a great impression on his teachers and fellow students, who were impressed with his outlandish and individualistic behavior, self-confidence, and his unconventional long hair. His Arabic teacher saw in him "a loving but controlled heart, an impetuous soul, a rebellious mind, an eye mocking everything it sees". However, the school’s strict and disciplined atmosphere was not to Gibran’s liking, who flagrantly flouted religious duties, skipped classes and drew sketches on books. At the school, Gibran met Joseph Hawaiik, with whom he started a magazine called al-Manarah (the Beacon), both editing while Gibran illustrated.
Meanwhile, Josephine Peabody, the twenty-four year old Bostonian beauty who caught Gibran’s attention during one of Day’s exhibitions, was intrigued by the young Syrian artist who dedicated a sketch to her, and began corresponding with Gibran throughout his stay in Lebanon. Soon, he became romantically involved with Josephine, and they kept exchanging letters until the relationship fell apart, following the rebuffal of Gibran’s marriage proposal and Josephine’s eventual marriage in 1906.
Gibran finished college in 1902, learning Arabic and French and excelling in his studies, especially poetry. Meanwhile, his relationship with his father became strained over Gibran’s advanced erudition, driving him to move in with his cousin and to live an impoverished life he detested and was ashamed of until the rest of his life. The poverty in Lebanon was compounded with news of illness striking his family, with his half-brother's consumption, his sister Sultana’s intestinal trouble and his mother’s developing cancer. Upon receiving news of Sultana’s dire illness, Gibran left Lebanon in March of 1902.
To his misfortune, Gibran arrived too late; Sultana died at the age of fourteen on April 4th 1902, the first in a series of three family deaths which will fall upon him in the coming months. Gibran was very fond of his sisters and of his family as a whole. At the time of mourning, both Day and Josephine provided distractions for him, in form of artistic shows and meetings at Boston’s artistic circles. Gibran’s artistic talents and unique behavior had captured earlier the interest of the Bostonian society, which welcomed this foreign talent into their artistic circles.
Josephine, who slowly captured Gibran’s heart, became an inflectional person in his life, the Bostonian poet constantly referring to Gibran as ‘her young prophet’. Greatly intrigued by his oriental background, Josephine was charmed by Gibran’s vividly illustrated correspondences and conversations. Josephine’s care and attention were the inspiration behind his book The Prophet, the title of which is based on an eleven-stanza poem Joesphine wrote in December of 1902 describing Gibran’s life in Bsharri as she envisaged it. Later on, when Gibran was to publish The Prophet, he dedicated it to Josephine, whose care and tenderness helped him advance his career.
Illness struck again when his mother underwent an operation in February to remove a cancerous tumor. To compound his misery, Gibran was forced to take on the family business and run the goods store, which was abandoned by his half-brother Peter to pursue his fortune in Cuba. This new burden weighed on Gibran’s spirit, depriving him from dedicating his time to artistic pursuits. During this time, Gibran tried to shy away from the house, to escape the atmosphere of death, poverty and illness. In the following month, Peter returned to Boston from Cuba fatally sick only to die days later on March 12 of consumption. His mother’s cancer continued to spread and she died later that year on June 28, a scene which left Gibran fainting and foaming blood from the mouth.
Following the three family deaths, Gibran sold out the family business and began immersing himself in improving both his Arabic and English writings, a twin task which he was to pursue for the rest of his life. Meanwhile, Day and Josephine were helping him launch his debut art exhibition, which was to feature his allegorical and symbolic charcoal drawings that so fascinated Boston’s society. The exhibition opened on May 3, 1904, and proved a success with the critics. However, the exhibition’s significance lay elsewhere. Josephine, through her future husband, invited a schoolmistress called Mary Haskell to examine Gibran’s drawings. This introduction to the schoolmistress was to mark the beginning of a lifetime relationship, which would greatly influence Gibran’s writing career. Gibran had sought Josephine’s opinion about his Arabic writings, translating them into English. With the language barrier, Josephine could only provide criticism over ideas and thoughts, leaving Gibran alone to tackle his linguistic problems. Josephine’s role was to be taken over by Mary Haskell.
Mary Haskell, who was thirty at the time and ten years older than Gibran, will go on to finance Gibran’s artistic development and encourage him to become the artist that he aspired to be. As a school head mistress, Haskell was an educated, strong-willed and independent woman and an active champion of women’s liberation, who was set apart to Josephine Peabody’s romantic nature. Mary was the reason behind Gibran’s decision to explore writing in English, as she persuaded Gibran to refrain from translating his Arabic works to English and concentrate instead on writing in English directly. Mary’s collaboration and editing of his various English works polished Gibran’s work, most of which first underwent Mary’s editing before going to the publishers. She would spend hours with Gibran, going over his wording, correcting his mistakes and suggesting new ideas to his writings. She even attempted learning Arabic to gain a better grasp of Gibran’s language and his thoughts.
The significance of Mary’s relationship with Gibran is revealed through her diaries, in which she recorded Gibran’s artistic development, their personal and intellectual conversations and his innermost thoughts for nearly seventeen years and a half. These recordings have provided critics with valuable insight into Gibran’s personal thoughts and ideas, which he kept away from the public eye.
In 1904, Gibran started to contribute articles to the Arabic-speaking émigré newspaper called Al-Mouhajer (The Emigrant), marking his first published written work. His first publication was called ‘Vision’, a romantic essay that portrayed a caged bird amid an abundance of symbolism. Despite spending four years in Lebanon learning Arabic, Gibran’s written Arabic left something to be desired. To master Arabic, Gibran relied on his ear for capturing traditional vocabulary, depending heavily on the Arabic stories narrated in his hometown of Bsharri. Hence his Arabic writing had a colloquial feel to it, which was comfortable to his audiences. According to Gibran, rules of language were meant to be broken and he went on to advocate Arab émigré writers to break out of tradition and seek an individual style. Throughout his life, Gibran’s Arabic writings did not receive the critical acclaim his English books had, leading him later on to concentrate on his English writings and abandon the cause of improving his Arabic style.
Gibran’s first Arabic written work came out in 1905 with the publication of Nubthah fi Fan Al-Musiqa (Music), a book inspired by his brother’s 'oud playing and Day’s several invitations to the Opera. During that year, Gibran started a column in Al-Mohajer called ‘Tears and Laughter’’, which was to form the basis of his book A Tear and a Smile. While writing in Al-Mohajer, a certain Arabic émigré writer called Ameen Rihani, wrote to the magazine lauding Gibran’s article which attacked contemporary Arab writers for imitating traditional writers and using poetry for financial gain. Rihani was to become an important Arabic writer and a friend of Gibran’s, whom he later left for the life-long friendship of Mikhail Naimy. At the time, Gibran published several Arabic poems and wrote in newspapers, about various subjects relating to love, truth, beauty, death, good and evil. Most of his writings had a romantic edge to them, with bitter and ironic tones.
In 1906, Gibran published his second Arabic book called Arayis Al- Muruj (The Nymphs of the Valley), a collection of three allegories which take place in Northern Lebanon. The allegories- ‘Martha’, ‘Yuhanna the Mad’, and ‘Dust of Ages and the Eternal Fire’- dealt with issues relating to prostitution, religious persecution, reincarnation and pre-ordained love. The allegories were heavily influenced by the stories he heard back in Bsharri and his own fascination with the Bible, the mystical, and the nature of love. Gibran was to return to the subject of madness in his English book ‘The Madman,’ whose beginnings can be traced to Gibran’s early Arabic writings. What characterized Gibran’s early Arabic publications was the use of the ironic, the realism of the stories, the portrayal of second-class citizens and the anti-religious tone, all of which contrasted with the formalistic and traditional Arabic writings.
Gibran published his third Arabic book Al-Arwah Al-Mutamarridah (Spirits Rebellious) in March of 1908, a collection of four narrative writings based on his writing in Al-Mouhajer. The book dealt with social issues in Lebanon, portraying a married woman’s emancipation from her husband, a heretic’s call for freedom, a bride’s escape from an unwanted marriage through death and the brutal injustices of 19th century Lebanese feudal lords. These writings received strong criticism from the clergy for their bold ideas, their negative portrayal of clergymen and their encouragement of women’s liberation. Gibran was to later recall to Mary the dark period in which Spirits Rebellious was written, during a time when he was haunted by death, illness and loss of love. The anti-clerical content of the book threatened Gibran with excommunication from the church, with the book being censored by the Syrian government.
During one of Gibran's art exhibitions in 1914, an American architect, Albert Pinkam Ryder, paid an unexpected visit to the exhibition, leaving an impression on Gibran who decided to write an English poem in his honor. The poem, which was first edited by Mary, became Gibran’s first English publication, when it went out into print in January 1915.
Meanwhile, Gibran became more actively involved in the politics of the day, especially with the onset of World War I. To Gibran, the war suggested hope of liberating Ottoman-ruled Syria, through a united Arab military front, aided by a general Allied attack. He called on both Muslim and Christian sides to unite their forces against the oppressive Ottoman hegemony. In fact, Gibran fantasized about becoming a fighter and a romantic political hero, who is able to lead his country to liberation. When he actually suggested to Mary going over to Lebanon to fill a post of fighter, she adamantly refused.
In 1915, the pain he had suffered in his shoulder when he was young began to come back, and he underwent electrical treatment on his left shoulder, which had remained weak and in quasi-paralyzed state following the childhood accident. During the war years, Gibran went into a depression that distracted his thoughts and debilitated his health. Despite his active and widespread writings about the Arab uprising against the Ottomans, Giban felt helpless, contributing whatever money he spared to his starving Syria. To distract himself from war thoughts, Gibran tried to seek further recognition in New York, boosting his social life and joining in 1916 the literary magazine The Seven Arts. Gibran prided himself in being the first immigrant to join the board of this magazine, which reflected Gibran’s literary style. At the time, Gibran’s presence began to be demanded in literary circles, who craved to hear recitations from his books and writings.
By 1918, Gibran began to tell Mary of an Arabic work he had been working on which he called ‘my island man,’ the seeds of his most famous book The Prophet. Based on a Promethean man’s exile to an island, The Prophet evoked the journey of the banished man called Al Mustafa, or the Chosen One. In her diary, Mary recounted Gibran’s musings about the book, which he later called ‘the first book in my career –my first real book, my ripened fruit." Soon Gibran added to the work the title of the Commonwealth, a separate work he had attached to the story of Al Mustafa. Gibran was to later link the seeds of The Prophet to an Arabic work he did when he was sixteen years old, where a man at an inn discusses with the rest of the attendants various subjects. However, Gibran still worried about his English writing and he sought Mary’s advice constantly. Gibran had always been fascinated by the language of the Syriac Bible, which reflected Gibran’s views on the creation of ‘an absolute language’, a task he tried to achieve through his various English writings, through the creation of a unified universal style.
Mary was crucial to the development of The Prophet, for she advised Gibran to adopt the English language for this book. Gibran was further encouraged to pursue writing in English following the attention given to his soon-to-be-published book The Madman. The conversation Gibran had with Mary over the issues of marriage, life, death, love…infiltrated his chapters in The Prophet and various other works. However, Mary was against the title of The Prophet, which Gibran came up with in 1919, preferring the title ‘The Counsels,’ the name which she continued to use after the publication of the book. By the fall of 1918, Gibran was preparing to publish his first English book, and another Arabic poem called ‘Al-Mawakib’ (The Processions), his first serious attempt at writing a traditional Arabic poem with rhyme and meter.
Gibran's first English book The Madman came out in 1918 and received good reviews from the local press, who compared him to the Indian writer Tagore, famous for bridging the gap between East and West, and the English poet William Blake. The Madman, a collection of parables which was illustrated by Gibran, revealed the influence of Nietzsche, Jung and Tagore. Following the success of The Madman, Gibran’s popularity began to soar and gradually Gibran started losing touch with his old acquaintances, Day, Josephine, and now he dissolved his relationship with Rihani. Gibran relished the aura of mystery which he evoked among people, given his undisclosed accounts of his oriental background and his personal reserve.
In 1919, Gibran published his Arabic poem ‘Al-Mawakib’, which received little success from the Arab press. During the same year, Gibran joined the board of yet another local magazine Fatat Boston, to which he contributed several Arabic articles. Throughout his life, Gibran joined societies and magazines such as Al-Mouhajer, Al-Funnon, The Golden Links Society and Fatat-Boston, in order to create a mouthpiece for avant-garde Arabic writing and unite Arabic literature abroad. However, Gibran’s success as an Arabic writer remained limited. Ironically, his Arabic language was still not up to standards and received little success in the Arabic press.
In Fatat-Boston, Gibran developed a close relationship with an Arab immigrant writer Mikhail Naimy, whom he had met earlier in 1914. Naimy, a critical thinker at the time, was among the first Arab writers to acknowledge Gibran’s efforts at advancing the Arab language, and correctly making use of Arab customs and background. He treated Gibran’s The Broken Wings as an example of the universal language of literature, pointing out that Selma Karameh could have easily come from a Russian, English or Italian background. However, following Gibran’s death, Naimy immortalized Gibran, replacing the man with a godly image.
With Naimy, Gibran formed in April of 1911 a ten-member Arab émigré organization called Arrabitah Al-Qalamyiah, which promoted the publication of Arab writings and the transmission of world literature. Throughout its life, Arrabitah was led by Gibran’s call for greater artistic freedom, ever encouraging writers to break the rules and seek individual styles. During the time, Gibran’s involvement in his Arabic writings distracted him from completing The Prophet for a while. Moreover, Gibran vacillated between resuming work on The Prophet or embarking on a lecture tour, as his spreading popularity demanded more artistic presence from him. However, he continued to view himself as a spokesman of both the Arab and English worlds, a role whose difficulty he admitted.
Meanwhile, Gibran's political ideas were incensing local politicians in Syria, who reacted against his article which stated ‘You have your Lebanon and I have my Lebanon.’ Gibran disapproved of the way the Syrian territories were being managed, and he wrote extensively on the identity of the emerging Arab countries, as the Greater Syria region began to be divided into Lebanon, Palestine and Syria. On the makeup of emerging countries, Gibran called on politicians to adopt the positive aspects of the Western culture and refrain from importing the surface values of guns and clothes. His political thought sooner gave way to a general view on the cultural makeup of countries and the way citizens ought to lead their lives.
By 1920, nearly three-quarters of The Prophet was done while Gibran’s Arab writings continued to occupy his time. In a poignant letter written to Mary, Gibran confessed that he has resolved the identity problem and has balanced the East and West influences, admitting that "I know now that I am a part of the whole -- a fragment of a jar.… Now I've found out where I fit, and in a way I am the jar -- and the jar is I."
In 1922, Gibran started to complain about heart trouble, which was later attributed to his nervous psychological state, and he personally admitted: "But my greatest pain is not physical. There’s something big in me…. I've always known it and I can’t get it out. It’s a silent greater self, sitting watching a smaller somebody in me do all sorts of things.’’ With the near compellation of work on The Prophet, Mary and Gibran acknowledged Nietzsche’s great influence on the book, which is reminiscent of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Mary had advised Gibran about the style of The Prophet, covering issues such as the use of capitalization, the use of punctuation marks and the form of paragraphs. Gibran had insisted that he wanted his paragraphs to remain short, almost becoming one lines. Mary had always pointed out that Gibran was a man of few words, who limited his letters to a minimum of words.
A few months before the publication of The Prophet, Gibran summarizeed the book to Mary: "The whole Prophet is saying one thing: ‘you are far far greater than you know -- and all is well.'
By 1923, Gibran had a well-established reputation in the Arab world through his Arabic articles, which he contributed to the various local and émigré Arabic newspapers. During this time, Gibran was gradually depending less on Mary as a financier and editor. He had agreed earlier with Mary to pay off his loans by sending her several of his paintings, an agreement which settled down their quarrels over money. And as Gibran's confidence in his English writings grew, his reliance on Mary's opinion dwindled. However, Mary’s face remained an inspiration in his illustrations, for soon Gibran will decide to restrict his paintings to book illustrations. The Prophet finally came into print in October of 1923, with a modest success in the U.S.
By 1923, Gibran had developed a close correspondence with an Arab writer, May Ziadeh. Their acceptance began in 1912, when she wrote to Gibran recalling to him how moved she was with the story of Selma Karameh in The Broken Wings.
May, an intellectual writer and an active proponent of women’s emancipation, was born in Palestine where she received classical education in a convent school. In 1908she had moved to Cairo where her father started a newspaper. Similar to Gibran, May was fluent in English, Arabic and French, and in 1911 she published her poems under the pseudonym Isis Copia. May found The Broken Wings too liberal for her own tastes, but the subject of women’s rights occupied her until the rest of her life and was a common passion between her and Gibran. Later on, May became a champion of Gibran’s writings and came to replace Mary’s role as an editor and conversant over the coming years. By 1921, Gibran had received her picture and they were to continue corresponding until the end of his life.
During the twenties, Gibran continued to be active in the political arena, writing extensively on the issue of culture and society and the need of the emerging Arab countries to transport the positive sides of Western culture. Gibran’s writings had remained controversial in his home country, especially with his liberal views on the Church and clergy. As a writer, Gibran relished controversy, and his writings reflected this spirit. His limited success in the Arab world drove Gibran to abandon the cause of gaining acceptance as an Arabic writer and he concentrated his efforts instead on writing in English. Slowly, Gibran was getting to grips with his writing, creating a style of language, as he revealed to Mary that he wished to write small unified books, which could be read in one sitting and carried in one’s pocket.
Mary's role in Gibran's writing career was gradually dwindling, but she came to his rescue when he made some bad investments. Mary had always handled Gibran’s financial affairs, ever present to extricate him from his bad financial keeping. However, Mary was about to make her life decision in 1923 by deciding to move into the house of a Southern landowner, to become his future wife in May of 1926. Gibran helped her reach this decision, which slightly clouded their relationship. However, Gibran continued to confide in Mary, and he told her about the second and third parts of The Prophet which he intended to write. The second part was to be called The Garden of the Prophet and it would recount the time the prophet spent in the garden on the island talking to his followers. The third part would be called The Death of the Prophet and it would describe the prophet’s return from the island and how he is imprisoned and freed only to be stoned to death in the market place. Gibran’s project was never to be completed, due to the deterioration of his health and his preoccupation with writing his longest English book, Jesus, The Son of Man.
As Mary slipped slowly out of his life, Gibran hired a new assistant Henrietta Breckenridge, who later played an important role following his death. She organized his works, helped him edit his writings and managed his studio for him. By 1926, Gibran had become a well-known international figure, a stance which was to his liking. Seeking a greater cosmopolitan exposure, Gibran began in 1926 to contribute articles to the quarterly journal The New Orient, which had an international approach encouraging the East and West to meet. At the time, he had started working on a new English work, Lazarus and His Beloved, which was based on an earlier Arabic work. This book was a dramatic collection of four poems recounting the Bible story of Lazarus, his quest for his soul and his eventual meeting of his soul mate.
In May of 1926, Mary married the Southern Landowner Florance Minis. At the time, Mary’s journals reveal Gibran’s perception with the writing of Jesus, The Son of Man. Writing the story of Jesus had been a lifetime ambition, especially the attempt at portraying Jesus as no one else has done before. Gibran had traced Jesus’ life from Syria to Palestine, never sparing a book that recounted his life journey. To Gibran, Jesus appeared as human acting in natural surroundings and he often had dreams about meeting his ideal character in the natural scenery of Bsharri. Gibran’s imagination was further fueled by the native stories he had heard in Lebanon about Jesus’ life and acts. Soon, by January of 1927 Mary was editing the book, for Gibran still relied on Mary’s editing before sending his works to print.
By 1928, Gibran’s health began to deteriorate, and the pain in his body due to his nervous state was on the increase, driving Gibran to seek relief in alcohol. Soon Gibran’s excess drinking turned him into an alcoholic at the height of the prohibition period in the U.S. That same year, Gibran was already thinking of the post-life and he began inquiring about purchasing a monastery in Bsharri, which was owned by Christian Carmelites. In November of 1928, Jesus, Son of Man was published and received good reviews from the local press, who delighted in Gibran’s treatment of Jesus, the Son of Man. By that time, the artistic circles thought it was high time Gibran was honored; by 1929 every possible society sought to give him a tribute. In honor of his literary success, a special anthology of Gibran’s early works was issued by Arrabitah under the title As-Sanabil.
Gibran’s mental health, however, and his alcohol addiction drove him in one evening to burst out crying, lamenting the weakness of his mature works. ‘I have lost my original creative power,’ he lamented to an audience during a reading of one of his mature works. By 1929, doctors were able to trace Gibran’s physical ailment to the enlargement of his livers. To avoid the issue of illness, Gibran ignored all medical care, relying instead on heavy drinking. To distract himself, Gibran turned to an old work about three Earth gods written in 1911. This new book recounts the story of three earth gods who watch the drama of a couple falling in love. Mary edited the book which went into print in mid-March of 1930.
By 1930, Gibran’s excessive drinking to escape the pain in his liver aggravated his disease, and hopes of finishing the second part of The Prophet, The Garden of the Prophet, dwindled. Gibran revealed to Mary his plans of building a library in Bsharri and soon he drew the last copy of his will. To his pen-pal May Ziadeh, Gibran revealed the fear of death as he admitted, ‘I am, May, a small volcano whose opening has been closed.'
On April 10th 1931, Gibran died at the age of forty-eight in a New York hospital, as the spreading cancer in his liver left him unconscious. The New York streets staged a two-day vigil for Gibran’s honor, whose death was mourned in the U.S. and Lebanon. His will left large amounts of money to his country, since he wanted his Syrian citizens to remain in their country and develop it rather than immigrate. Mary, Mariana and Henrietta all attended to Gibran’s studio, organizing his works, sorting out books, illustrations and drawings. To fulfill Gibran’s dream, Marianna and Mary travelled in July of 1931 to Lebanon to bury Gibran in his hometown of Bsharri. The citizens of Lebanon received his coffin with celebration rather than mourning, rejoicing his homecoming, for in death Gibran’s popularity increased. Upon Gibran’s return, The Lebanese Minister of Arts opened the coffins and honored his body with a decoration of Fine Arts. Meanwhile, Marianna and Mary started negotiating the purchase of the Carmelite monastery Gibran wished to obtain. By January of 1932, the Mar Sarkis monastery was bought and Gibran moved to his final resting-place. Upon Mary’s suggestion, his belongings, the books he read, and some of his works and illustrations were later shipped to provide a local collection in the monastery, which turned into a Gibran museum. ..
Kilde (which I hearty recommend ): www.PoemHunter.com
søndag 12. oktober 2008
Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotskij Tribute (1938 - 1980)
VARGJAKTEN oversatt til svensk av Ola og Carsten Palmær
Strupen brinner. Jag springer, springer
men idag är allt som igår.
De har oss i fällan, de har oss i fällan.
Vi springer i cirkel, i blodiga spår.
De lyfter bössorna, de skrattar och siktar
och luften stinker av blod och bly.
Vargarna snavar. Vargarna stupar.
Vi kan inte hugga. Vi kan inte fly.
De skjuter vargar, ohoj, de skjuter vargar!
Nu ropar jägarna, nu ylar hundarna,
de skjuter honorna, de skjuter ungarna,
och snön är röd som deras flaggor av vårt blod.
Kampen är ojämn. De skjuter ur bakhåll
och ingen darrar på handen idag.
De stänger vår frihet med röda flaggor
de känner vargarna och vargarnas lag
de vet att vi alltid följer flocken
att när vi var ungar och mor gav oss di
så fick vi i oss med modersmjölken
att röda flaggor går ingen förbi!
De skjuter vargar, ohoj, de skjuter vargar!
Nu ropar jägarna, nu ylar hundarna,
de skjuter honorna, de skjuter ungarna
och snön är röd som deras flaggor av vårt blod.
Våra ben är snabba. Och käftarna starka
så svara mig, ledarvarg, svara mig du,
varför låter vi oss hetsas och slaktas
varför lyder vi flockens tabu?
Vi kan inte, får inte bryta mot lagen.
Min stund är inne. Jag blundar
när han som ska bli mitt öde
ler och lyfter sitt blanka gevär.
De skjuter vargar, ohoj, de skjuter vargar!
Nu ropar jägarna, nu ylar hundarna,
de skjuter honorna, de skjuter ungarna
och snön är röd som deras flaggor av vårt blod.
Jag vägrade lyda. Jag sprang igenom.
Jag trotsade flaggorna och bröt mig ut.
Min livstörst var starkare än flockens lagar,
nu hör jag jägarns förvånade tjut
och strupen brinner, jag springer, jag springer
men allt är inte idag som igår
I jag var i fällan, men bröt mig ur den
och utan byte får jägarna stå.
De skjuter vargar, ohoj, de skjuter vargar!
Nu ropar jägarna, nu ylar hundarna,
de skjuter honorna, de skjuter ungarna
och snön är röd som deras flaggor av vårt blod.
WOLF HUNT by Kathryn and Bruce Hamilton
In my flight, sinews bursting, I hurtle,
But as yesterday - so now today,
They've cornered me! Driven me, encircled,
Towards the huntsmen that wait for their prey!
From the fir-trees the rifle-shots quicken -
In the shadows the huntsmen lie low.
As they fire, the wives somersault, stricken,
Living targets brought down on the snow.
They're hunting wolves! The hunt is on, pursuing
The wily predators, the she-wolf and her brood.
The beaters shout, the dogs bay, almost spewing.
The flags on the snow are red, as red as the blood.
In the fight heavy odds have opposed us,
But the merciless huntsmen keep ranks.
With the flags on their ropes they've enclosed us.
They take aim and they fire at point blank.
For a wolf cannot break with tradition.
With milk sucked from the she-wolfs dugs
The blind cubs learn the stern prohibition
Never, never to cross the red flags!
They're hunting wolves! The hunt is on, pursuing
The wily predators, the she-wolf and her brood.
The beaters shout, the dogs bay, almost spewing.
The flags on the snow are red, as red as the blood.
We are swift and our jaws are rapacious.
Why then, chief, like a tribe that's oppressed,
Must we rush towards the weapons that face us
And that precept be never transgressed?
For a wolf cannot change the old story
The end looms and my time's, almost done.
Now the huntsman who's made me his quarry
Gives a smile as he raises his gun.
They're hunting wolves! The hunt is on, pursuing
The wily predators, the she-wolf and her brood.
The beaters shout, the dogs bay, almost spewing.
The flags on the snow are red, as red as the blood.
But revolt and the life-force are stronger
Than the fear that the red flags instil
From behind come dismayed cries of anger
As I cheat them, with joy, of their kill.
In my flight, sinews bursting I hurtle,
But the outcome is different today!
I was cornered! They trapped me encircled!
But the huntsmen were foiled of their prey!
They're hunting wolves! The hunt is on, pursuing
The wily predators, the she-wolf and her brood.
The beaters shout, the dogs bay, almost spewing.
The flags on the snow are red, as red as the blood.
A HUNT ON WOLVES by Nellie Tkach
I strain myself out of all my might and sinew,
But today, just like yesterday,
I am close rounded.
They've cornered me, for God's sake!
They are keeping after, joyfully driving me at all speeds!
The rifles behind the fir-trees are keeping themselves busy -
There, the hunters hide in the shadows -
The wolves are frolicking on the snow,
Turned into a live target.
The hunt is on! The hunt on wolves,
On gray beasts, full-grown and puppies!
The beaters shout and the hounds bark until they're retching,
There is blood on snow and red spots of flags.
It's not a fair game they are playing,
But no hand trembles, -
Our freedom blocked by flags,
They strike safely, for sure!
A wolf can't fail his customs, -
Long time ago-blind puppies,
We, little ones, sucked our mother,
And sucked in: don't go outside of flags!
The hunt is on! The hunt on wolves,
On gray beasts, full-grown and puppies!
The beaters shout and the hounds bark until they're retching,
There is blood on snow and red spots of flags.
Our feet and jaws are swift,
Tell us, our leader, - why do we then
Rush onward, into the shots,
And not through the restraint?!
A wolf can not, must not do otherwise.
Now my time has ended:
The one I am intended for,
Smiled and raised his rifle.
The hunt is on! The hunt on wolves,
On gray beasts, full-grown and puppies!
The beaters shout and the hounds bark until they're retching,
There is blood on snow and red spots of flags.
I came out of the obedience trance -
Beyond the flags - my thirst for life is stronger,
Behind me I heard triumphantly
Their bewildered cries.
I strain myself out of all my might and sinew,
But today, not like yesterday,
I was close rounded.
They've cornered me, for God's sake!
But the hunters were left with nothing!
The hunt is on! The hunt on wolves,
On gray beasts, full-grown and puppies!
The beaters shout and the hounds bark until they're retching,
There is blood on snow and red spots of flags.
Here is a song "Chuzhoj Dom" - "The Foreign House", typical of the style of the great Russian singer and poet Vladimir Vysotskij. Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotskij, in Russian Влади́мир Семёнович Высо́цкий (1938 - 1980), was perhaps the brightest artistic mind in the former Soviet Union. A highly anti-establishemnt song-writer and singer, and became somewhat of a folk hero. His main occupation was as a lead actor at the Taganka Theatre in Moscow, where he became particularly famous for playing Hamlet in an off-stream performance of Shakespeare's play. Vysotskij appeared in several movies. He also wrote songs and soundracks for many movies and often sang them himself. Being in a constant conflict with Soviet authorities resulted in periodic bans of his songs. He became known for his unique singing style and for his lyrics, which incorporated social and political commentary into often humorous street vocabulary. His lyrics resonated with millions of Soviet people in every corner of the country; his songs were sung at house parties and amateur concerts. He died at age 42 in a hospital in Moscow during the 1980 Olympic Games. It was estimated that over one million people attended Vysotskij's funeral, almost as many as that of Pope John Paul II in 2005. Soon after his death an asteroid was named Vladvysotskij in his honor. Cosmonauts took his music on tape cassette into orbit. Vysotskij was married to the French actress (of Russian descent) Marina Vlady. Vysotskij's impact in Russia is often compared to that of Bob Dylan in America. In his last years, he managed to perform outside the USSR and held concerts in Paris, Toronto and New York City. Vysotskij composed his songs and played them exclusively on the Russian seven string guitar.
Listen to his intense voice and enjoy!
Video of Vladimir Vysotsky performing Cupola. It is his last recorded performance before his death.
I recommend:
- "Sånger av Vysotskij" by Dan Fägerquist & eldsjäl
- "Fägerquist sjunger sånger av Vysotskij live på mosebacke"
- www.myspace.com/fagerquist
- "Bortom Vett och Förnuft". Jon Denman from Sweden singing Vladimir Vysotskij.
- "Den sentimentale bokser - Vysotskij på dansk (1999)". Per Warming from Denmark.
- "Russlands Hus - Vladimir Vysotskij (1996)" by Jørn Simen Øverli from Norway
- " Vysotskij, Vladimir: Vargjakten. 48 sånger i tolkning av Carsten och Ola Palmær"
lørdag 11. oktober 2008
Sad, Mad Vincent, how we both wandered, never really going home
Everywhere I look
Oh I see the magic
And I somehow
Try to capture it
It's been the only way
To turn from lonely
Even though
I'm losing grip
Oh I just
can't
I just can't stay
It's really hard to sleep
With these paintings everywhere
It's sad to see this beauty
When I'm dieing of despair
I can't sleep
And I can't go on
Been so lonely here today
Been so lonely -
so lonely
for so long
Oh I
I just can't stay
Oh really
I can't stay
Day in day out something drives me and I
stop to paint
all these miracles of color
Don't want to listen to all these
voices in my head
telling me that this ain't life
that I should choose another...
Arles, a town in the South of France
When the sun bursts from the clouds, bursts from behind and beyond doubt -
if you're lucky
Vincent
All you'll remember seeing are the rooftops
A town of rooftops
Not a town painted in pain
It ain't funny.
What a difference,
a day don't make.
It's kind of frightening?
How you let yourself,
get this way?
You had time.
That was back when you had it made.
But you sold out time
Like you had so much time,
left to save.
Gonna take an earthquake
To hit you
Right between the eyes
Gonna take an earthquake
Just to get you,
to read between the lines
Man it ain't funny……
Sad mad Vincent
you can hear the children laughing
they've made you part of their children's game
You stumble through the dusty street
wondering if even the whores
will right away forget your name
It's getting harder to believe
any more
that anything is true
You never set out to
hurt no one
you could never be that cruel
There's voices in your head
today
the voices you can't drink away
They're taunting you
like the children's game
Telling you "Don't put that gun away."
If only they would let you sleep
If only Paul had stayed
if only there could be some rest
not just the kind you'll find in death
Sad mad Vincent
the gypsies dance in Avignon
They mutilate their children
So they'll beg better - bring a lot of money home
How could you have ever known?
You'd feel this sad until you finally had to go?
Sad mad Vincent
I also stared all night at a gun
held it in my hand like a lover
but i threw it down in shame and prayed that i'd see tomorrow come
Sad mad Vincent
I also wandered midnight streets alone
But i prayed that there'd be someone somewhere
who would take me in before i choose to let it all go
Hey Vincent, remember the gypsies
in Aix en Province?
Do you remember the punk from Chicago
he was back from Marseilles after sleeping in the park by the train station with
his guitar chained to his arm?
The drunks gave him wide berth because he was "sick and dirty
more dead than alive?"(Lou Reed)
Or did i see you?
Mad sad Vincent in all the hallow eyes of all the
rag-tags and hopeful hopeless ones who hadn't much of anything to carry with them and eyed my guitar with careful strategy and in fact that morning on the beach in Brindisi, I awoke with a start, inhaling the foul stink of decayed fish and then the fetid breath, wine - stale garlic coming from the mouth of that skinny Italian hood who was trying to cut the guitar case away from my hand and who could have had it - the hand, the guitar, but i sneered and mouthed "Musica - man you're taking my life - Lavida - life!!! and he left with reluctance while i dug up the bottle of wine I'd buried the night before when the kids from the boat left me after warning that the beach was not safe and was i fucking insane to think i could sleep there without getting robbed - sliced up like a loaf of warm bread but i didn't pay them any heed and woke up with the hood's knees pressing into my gasping chest and
Sad mad Vincent -
i was heading to see where you'd painted and loved and drank and smoked and died in the town of roof-tops - Arles and then i'd lay back in that beat hotel room with windows open - calling out at all the whores in Avignon
but me too
i
as well
as you must have known as we must have passed each other by, a million times on that troubled trip through France and the world and always
i can't wipe away the slander from my sore and tired red eyes
could never, Vincent, ease enough pure joy into my heart to stop feeling so fucking sad -
you'd of had to know that you couldn't stay so sad so all alone for ever that there would be other's and that's always
how you'd pass me by
two forever unknowns - hipsters bent on deciding that what's worth it rarely is
so then must be
ain't gonna
or will never
we pass each other by
infinitely sad we could barely hold back tears when all around us there is always laughter and it is often emanating from the words and expressions we have lauded - have thrown as sacrifice or payment of passage
it's laughter we have brought to all those others, and eternal goofs-
we clown and sometimes in no particular hurry,
we die.
Passing through Paris and hating being hated to the point it all was funny enough to
dash madly through the rain and the crowds and jump over the turn-styles to make the famous elevated - high speed trains filled with workers and stuffy going nowhere Parisians who have loafs of bread under their arms
and Vincent I also passed you by on the Island in Greece where I know you hardly had time to rest before they were throwing me out of hotel after hotel for sexual fiasco's and broken beds after the slow boat left with my heart broken as i sat with the itinerant dog - another Iggy.
We watched that boat it took a hundred years to drift off with her still leaning on the back rail, our eyes locked and she had given me what money she had left and was on her way back to London and her blue eyes were gifts of magic she lent to me
before i was sure that like you Vincent - sad and mad, i was sure that i was going to love her for ever and the whole village was jealous that in only one day i had taken away from their Latin macho sensitivities, the most beautiful of all tourists to come to the Island that year and half that village hated me more than hatred while the other half laughed and applauded as i fell out of their hotels and finally had to sleep in the unfinished construction project i had been working on with George the pirate -
Vincent - you have gone and done all these historical moments before i had even been born but each step of the way
i saw you
and you sadly shook your head when
you knew all too well that i would one day
find it all too much and you could only pass me by
And…
Vincent, my sad, mad Vincent
you talked about that special radiant sunshine and
what it could do to color and how the wind moved so your lines also
moved , I wonder how often you talked of living when each day you were dying in the coldest atmosphere – an atmosphere of indifference.
Your brother Leo,
sometimes it was all one big party and
he always helped but he couldn't believe – he
didn't believe and that was dieing too Vincent. Yeah that was dieing too.
You never sold a painting.
You gave them away for your heart breaks were also breaking from the kindness of the street.
I passed you by, huddled in a doorway in Florence, you, called to me
You passed me a bottle and I drank like I had done in all the worlds' doorways and alleys and early morning mist.
When Tinkers, bleeding and foul in that alley behind the bar in Sligo Bay, Ireland, when I was sixteen and they had me go by that cheap cider and we smoked and drank and I thought that I was finally living but you Vincent, you could already see that I was dieing all the time and had started a
fantastic slide to so many depths of alone and outcast, and knew that I would have to be
bold and would have to be strong if I were to continue dieing each day and
cared to feel - to see, all and everything that was out there in one mad glance and wanted more – always more, like the Tinkers in the alley wanted more Hard Cider
and later Vincent you must have
smiled to see me worried when the Tinker on the horse-cart, whipped his animal and guide hard
upon its sweating flanks and the horse just took the cart around and around in front of that fancy restaurant and
unsure what exactly the man was screaming about and making such a fuss, the horse continued moving in circles.
I was also moving in circles Vincent, unsure and still looking steady and straight ahead so that sometimes I fooled everyone into believing I was their leader. But I guess you knew – you knew all along.
Sad, mad Vincent Van Gogh
You had to know that we could only just
Only just almost make it – look as if we belonged, look as if we were strong, looked as if we were happening.
it turns out
fallin apart took me to pieces
and i wandered today
afraid this time
for the sun to go away
feeling like
there just won't be a reason
strong
enough
except maybe just a hug
Sad, mad Vincent all through my journey I had hoped that I'd emulate surpass are just find heroes. You falling apart watching me fall apart like I had been this forgotten fighter in the ring of chance pugilistic, chin tucked into my only reserve, throwing aside caution to live and you who had paid also so dearly to live in a cold atmosphere where we have sat and gazed blank eyed into the distance where memories have been stored forever for the day when you could just not make me understand that I had better stay down, or I'd eventually get…..
No one believed.
That it could turn out this way.
So beaten and dragged.
In so too much pain.
Each breath's a struggle.
Like a to be or not to be
day.
Could i have missed it?
That I may not last?
Can't plan the future -
when there's so much
that's been lost still, in the past.
Weak, dragged and I'm
asking why it still
matters that much?
To keep on swinging,
long after, there ain't
no more punch?
'Cause from the corner,
softer,
each time.
Like Sirens singing.
Man it'll drive me
outta my mind.
They're saying - stay down boy
stay down boy,
stay down.
Aw no one's that tough.
So for your own good
stay down
But you know
that you'll never get up
Still they're steady saying
stay down boy, stay down boy.
stay down.
Kilde: Unknown
Oh I see the magic
And I somehow
Try to capture it
It's been the only way
To turn from lonely
Even though
I'm losing grip
Oh I just
can't
I just can't stay
It's really hard to sleep
With these paintings everywhere
It's sad to see this beauty
When I'm dieing of despair
I can't sleep
And I can't go on
Been so lonely here today
Been so lonely -
so lonely
for so long
Oh I
I just can't stay
Oh really
I can't stay
Day in day out something drives me and I
stop to paint
all these miracles of color
Don't want to listen to all these
voices in my head
telling me that this ain't life
that I should choose another...
Arles, a town in the South of France
When the sun bursts from the clouds, bursts from behind and beyond doubt -
if you're lucky
Vincent
All you'll remember seeing are the rooftops
A town of rooftops
Not a town painted in pain
It ain't funny.
What a difference,
a day don't make.
It's kind of frightening?
How you let yourself,
get this way?
You had time.
That was back when you had it made.
But you sold out time
Like you had so much time,
left to save.
Gonna take an earthquake
To hit you
Right between the eyes
Gonna take an earthquake
Just to get you,
to read between the lines
Man it ain't funny……
Sad mad Vincent
you can hear the children laughing
they've made you part of their children's game
You stumble through the dusty street
wondering if even the whores
will right away forget your name
It's getting harder to believe
any more
that anything is true
You never set out to
hurt no one
you could never be that cruel
There's voices in your head
today
the voices you can't drink away
They're taunting you
like the children's game
Telling you "Don't put that gun away."
If only they would let you sleep
If only Paul had stayed
if only there could be some rest
not just the kind you'll find in death
Sad mad Vincent
the gypsies dance in Avignon
They mutilate their children
So they'll beg better - bring a lot of money home
How could you have ever known?
You'd feel this sad until you finally had to go?
Sad mad Vincent
I also stared all night at a gun
held it in my hand like a lover
but i threw it down in shame and prayed that i'd see tomorrow come
Sad mad Vincent
I also wandered midnight streets alone
But i prayed that there'd be someone somewhere
who would take me in before i choose to let it all go
Hey Vincent, remember the gypsies
in Aix en Province?
Do you remember the punk from Chicago
he was back from Marseilles after sleeping in the park by the train station with
his guitar chained to his arm?
The drunks gave him wide berth because he was "sick and dirty
more dead than alive?"(Lou Reed)
Or did i see you?
Mad sad Vincent in all the hallow eyes of all the
rag-tags and hopeful hopeless ones who hadn't much of anything to carry with them and eyed my guitar with careful strategy and in fact that morning on the beach in Brindisi, I awoke with a start, inhaling the foul stink of decayed fish and then the fetid breath, wine - stale garlic coming from the mouth of that skinny Italian hood who was trying to cut the guitar case away from my hand and who could have had it - the hand, the guitar, but i sneered and mouthed "Musica - man you're taking my life - Lavida - life!!! and he left with reluctance while i dug up the bottle of wine I'd buried the night before when the kids from the boat left me after warning that the beach was not safe and was i fucking insane to think i could sleep there without getting robbed - sliced up like a loaf of warm bread but i didn't pay them any heed and woke up with the hood's knees pressing into my gasping chest and
Sad mad Vincent -
i was heading to see where you'd painted and loved and drank and smoked and died in the town of roof-tops - Arles and then i'd lay back in that beat hotel room with windows open - calling out at all the whores in Avignon
but me too
i
as well
as you must have known as we must have passed each other by, a million times on that troubled trip through France and the world and always
i can't wipe away the slander from my sore and tired red eyes
could never, Vincent, ease enough pure joy into my heart to stop feeling so fucking sad -
you'd of had to know that you couldn't stay so sad so all alone for ever that there would be other's and that's always
how you'd pass me by
two forever unknowns - hipsters bent on deciding that what's worth it rarely is
so then must be
ain't gonna
or will never
we pass each other by
infinitely sad we could barely hold back tears when all around us there is always laughter and it is often emanating from the words and expressions we have lauded - have thrown as sacrifice or payment of passage
it's laughter we have brought to all those others, and eternal goofs-
we clown and sometimes in no particular hurry,
we die.
Passing through Paris and hating being hated to the point it all was funny enough to
dash madly through the rain and the crowds and jump over the turn-styles to make the famous elevated - high speed trains filled with workers and stuffy going nowhere Parisians who have loafs of bread under their arms
and Vincent I also passed you by on the Island in Greece where I know you hardly had time to rest before they were throwing me out of hotel after hotel for sexual fiasco's and broken beds after the slow boat left with my heart broken as i sat with the itinerant dog - another Iggy.
We watched that boat it took a hundred years to drift off with her still leaning on the back rail, our eyes locked and she had given me what money she had left and was on her way back to London and her blue eyes were gifts of magic she lent to me
before i was sure that like you Vincent - sad and mad, i was sure that i was going to love her for ever and the whole village was jealous that in only one day i had taken away from their Latin macho sensitivities, the most beautiful of all tourists to come to the Island that year and half that village hated me more than hatred while the other half laughed and applauded as i fell out of their hotels and finally had to sleep in the unfinished construction project i had been working on with George the pirate -
Vincent - you have gone and done all these historical moments before i had even been born but each step of the way
i saw you
and you sadly shook your head when
you knew all too well that i would one day
find it all too much and you could only pass me by
And…
Vincent, my sad, mad Vincent
you talked about that special radiant sunshine and
what it could do to color and how the wind moved so your lines also
moved , I wonder how often you talked of living when each day you were dying in the coldest atmosphere – an atmosphere of indifference.
Your brother Leo,
sometimes it was all one big party and
he always helped but he couldn't believe – he
didn't believe and that was dieing too Vincent. Yeah that was dieing too.
You never sold a painting.
You gave them away for your heart breaks were also breaking from the kindness of the street.
I passed you by, huddled in a doorway in Florence, you, called to me
You passed me a bottle and I drank like I had done in all the worlds' doorways and alleys and early morning mist.
When Tinkers, bleeding and foul in that alley behind the bar in Sligo Bay, Ireland, when I was sixteen and they had me go by that cheap cider and we smoked and drank and I thought that I was finally living but you Vincent, you could already see that I was dieing all the time and had started a
fantastic slide to so many depths of alone and outcast, and knew that I would have to be
bold and would have to be strong if I were to continue dieing each day and
cared to feel - to see, all and everything that was out there in one mad glance and wanted more – always more, like the Tinkers in the alley wanted more Hard Cider
and later Vincent you must have
smiled to see me worried when the Tinker on the horse-cart, whipped his animal and guide hard
upon its sweating flanks and the horse just took the cart around and around in front of that fancy restaurant and
unsure what exactly the man was screaming about and making such a fuss, the horse continued moving in circles.
I was also moving in circles Vincent, unsure and still looking steady and straight ahead so that sometimes I fooled everyone into believing I was their leader. But I guess you knew – you knew all along.
Sad, mad Vincent Van Gogh
You had to know that we could only just
Only just almost make it – look as if we belonged, look as if we were strong, looked as if we were happening.
it turns out
fallin apart took me to pieces
and i wandered today
afraid this time
for the sun to go away
feeling like
there just won't be a reason
strong
enough
except maybe just a hug
Sad, mad Vincent all through my journey I had hoped that I'd emulate surpass are just find heroes. You falling apart watching me fall apart like I had been this forgotten fighter in the ring of chance pugilistic, chin tucked into my only reserve, throwing aside caution to live and you who had paid also so dearly to live in a cold atmosphere where we have sat and gazed blank eyed into the distance where memories have been stored forever for the day when you could just not make me understand that I had better stay down, or I'd eventually get…..
No one believed.
That it could turn out this way.
So beaten and dragged.
In so too much pain.
Each breath's a struggle.
Like a to be or not to be
day.
Could i have missed it?
That I may not last?
Can't plan the future -
when there's so much
that's been lost still, in the past.
Weak, dragged and I'm
asking why it still
matters that much?
To keep on swinging,
long after, there ain't
no more punch?
'Cause from the corner,
softer,
each time.
Like Sirens singing.
Man it'll drive me
outta my mind.
They're saying - stay down boy
stay down boy,
stay down.
Aw no one's that tough.
So for your own good
stay down
But you know
that you'll never get up
Still they're steady saying
stay down boy, stay down boy.
stay down.
Kilde: Unknown
fredag 10. oktober 2008
Constantine P. Cavafy's poem Ithaca (1910, 1911)
One of the most famous Greek poems, read by Elli Lambeti. Music background by Mark Isham.
ITHACA (1910, 1911)
As you set out for Ithaca
hope that your journey is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - don't be afraid of them:
You'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare sensasion
touches your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope that your journey is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind -
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and learn again from those who know.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so that you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.
Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would have not set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaca won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithacas mean.
fredag 3. oktober 2008
Til ungdommen av Nordahl Grieg (1902 - 1943)
Til grunn for Griegs kampdikt ligger en visjon om fred, og om en samfunnsdannelse der motsetningene forenes og ikke fører til splid. Denne visjonen er det opp til ungdommen å realisere!
Til Ungdommen av Nordahl Grieg
Kringsatt av Fiender,
gå inn i din tid!
Under en blodig storm -
vi deg til strid!
Kanskje du spør i angst,
udekket, åpen:
hva skal jeg kjempe med
hva er mitt våpen?
Her er ditt vern mot vold,
her er ditt sverd:
troen på livet vårt,
menneskets verd.
For all vår fremtids skyld,
søk det og dyrk det,
dø om du må - men:
øk det og styrk det!
Stilt går granatenes
glidende bånd
Stans deres drift mot død
stans dem med ånd!
Krig er forakt for liv.
Fred er å skape.
Kast dine krefter inn:
døden skal tape!
(Elsk og berik med drøm
alt stort som var!
Gå mot det ukjente
fravrist der svar.
Ubygde kraftverk,
ukjente stjerner.
Skap dem, med skånet livs
dristige hjerner!
Edelt er mennesket,
jorden er rik!
Finnes her nød og sult
skyldes det svik.
Knus det! I livets navn
skal urett falle.
Solskinn og brød og ånd
eies av alle.)
Da synker våpnene
maktesløst ned!
Skaper vi menneskeverd
skaper vi fred.
Den som med høyre arm
bærer en byrde,
dyr og umistelig,
kan ikke myrde.
Dette er løftet vårt
fra bror til bror:
vi vil bli gode mot
menneskenes jord.
Vi vil ta vare på
skjønnheten, varmen
som om vi bar et barn
varsomt på armen!
English translation by Rod Sinclair (2004)
Faced by your enemies
On every hand
Battle is menacing,
Now make your stand
Fearful your question,
Defenceless, open
What shall I fight with?
Where is my weapon?
Here is your battle plan,
Here is your shield
Faith in this life of ours,
The common weal
For all our children's sake,
Save it, defend it,
Pay any price you must,
They shall not end it
Neat stacks of cannon shells,
Row upon row
Death to the life you love,
All that you know
War is contempt for life,
Peace is creation
Death's march is halted
By determination
We all deserve the world,
Harvest and seed
Hunger and poverty
Are born of greed
Don't turn your face away
From needs of others
Reach out a helping hand
To all your brothers
Here is our solemn vow,
From land to land
We will protect our world
From tyrants' hand
Defend the beautiful,
Gentle and innocent
Like any mother would
Care for her infant.
"Cantor General" av Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) gjendiktet til norsk av Kjartan Fløgstad
Theodorakis rehearsing "Voy a Vivir" from Canto General, poem by Pablo Neruda with Petros Pandis 1975. They prepare a concert held at Karaiskaki stadium a few months after the restoration of democracy in Greece. Petros Pandis is the male singer who first interpreted this composition together with Maria farantouri.
Voy a Vivir - Eg skal leva (1949)gjendiktet og oversatt av Kjartan Fløgstad
Eg skal ikkje døy. Nå går eg ut,
i denne dagen full av vulkanar,
på veg til massane, til livet.
Her let eg alt i orden etter meg,
i dag då gangsterane går omkring
Med den ”vestlege kulturen” under armen,
Med hendene som drep i Spania
og galgane som svingar i Aten
og uretten som styrer i Chile,
og ein gong endar der.
Her stoggar eg
blant ord og folk og vegar
som ventar meg på ny, og slår
på døra mi med stjernetunge hender.
The first Theodorakis concert after the dictatorship in october 1974 was also filmed by german television. Here are the songs of that broadcast: "America Insurecta" from Canto General (Neruda) sung by Petros Pandis.
Kjærleik til Amerika (America Insurecta)til norsk ved Kjartan Fløgstad
Før parykken og uniformsjakken
var elvane, elvane som pulsårer:
var fjellrekkjene, der kondoren og snøen
syntest urørlege på det verbitne havet av fjell:
var væta og tjukna, tora
ennå utan namn, dei planetariske slettene.
Mennesket var jord, krukke, augnelok
av skjelvande søle, form av leire,
var karibisk krukke, chibchastein,
keisarleg beger eller araukansk flint.
Ærleg og blodig var det, men i skaftet
åpnet det bar av våt krystall,
var forbokstavane til jorda
rissa.
Ingen kunne
hugsa dei etterpå: vinden
gløymde dei, vatnet sitt språk
vart grave ned, nøklane var borte
eller drukna i stille eller blod.
Brør frå landet, livet gjekk ikkje til grunne.
Men ein raud drope fall
som ei vill rose i tjukna
og ein lampe av jord vart sløkt.
Eg er her for
fortelja historia.
frå freden til bøffelen
til den piska sanden
i det ytste landet, i det opphopa
skummet av antarktisk lys,
og gjennom dei herja dyrehia
i den mørke venezolanske freden,
leita eg etter deg, far,
unge krigar av mørke og kopar,
eller du, brudeplante, ustyrlege manke,
morsalligator, metalliske due.
Eg, som ein inka reist frå søla
rørde ved steinen og sa:
Kven
ventar meg? Og lukka handa
om ein neve tomt krystall.
Men eg gjekk ut blant zapoteblomane
og lyset var mjukt som ein hjort,
og skuggane låg som eit grønt augnelok.
Mi jord utan namn, utan Amerika,
livsens jamdøger, purpurlanse,
angen din steig mot meg med røtene
til glaset eg drakk, til det minste
ordet som enn
ikkje er fødd frå min munn.
”Voy a vivir” (1949) og ”America Insurrecta” er skrevet av Pablo Neruda (1904 – 1973), og gjendiktet og oversatt til norsk av Kjartan Fløgstad. Fløgstad har skrevet en rekke dikt og gjendiktninger, prosastykker, fortellinger, essays, romaner og dokumentarer. Han kom til Sør-Amerika for første gang som sjømann på et norsk lasteskip, og har senere besøkt kontinentet flere ganger. Hans møte med Sør-Amerika og dets folk har preget mye av hans diktning, som for eksempel ”Pampa Union. Latinamerikanske reiser” (1994) og ”Eld og vatn. Nordmenn i Sør-Amerika” (1999). Kjartan Fløgstad er Pablo Nerudas norske gjendikter, og har oversatt flere av Pablo Nerudas dikt fra både ”Canto General” og ”Kapteinens vers”. Sistnevnte er Nerudas kjærlighetsdikt til sin elskede Matilde. Fløgstad har mottat en rekke litterære priser, bl.a. Nordisk Råds litteraturpris, Brageprisen og Gyldendal-prisen.
Theodorakis Neruda Requiem er en hyllest til Pablo Neruda. I 1975 ble Canto General urframført i Helles. Landet hadde da nylig gjenvunnet sitt demokrati etter flere år med juntastyre. Verket ble tilegnet det chilenske folk, som ble tvunget inn under Pinochets diktatoriske terror. I Canto General møtes to store kunstnere, begge solid forankret i sine folks historie, myter, lidelser og kamp - begge med en fortid hvor de selv satte sine liv inn i kampen for demokrati og frihet. Med sitt felles verk sprer de glede og bringer håp til alle frihetselskende mennesker.
Anbefaler bøkene:
- ”Pablo Neruda , Den store sangen” gjendiktet av Halvor Roll. Utgitt på Gyldendal Norsk Forlag A/S, Oslo 1991
- "Kjartan Fløgstad, Dikt og spelmannsmusikk 1968 – 1993". Utgitt på Gyldendals Norsk Forlag A/S, Oslo 1993
Kilde: Sosialistisk kor i Oslo stiftet 1975
Til minne - Mahmoud Darwish - en elsket Palestinsk poet som forlot oss 10. august 2008
على هذه الأرض ما يستحق الحياة
تردد إبريل
رائحة الخبز في الفجر
تعويذة امرأة للرجال
أول الحب
عشب على حجر
أمهات يقفن على خيط ناي
وخوف الغزاة من الذكريات
على هذه الأرض ما يستحق الحياة
نهايات أيلول
سيدة تترك الأربعين بكامل مشمشها
ساعة الشمس في السجن
غيم يقلد سربا من الكائنات
هتافات شعب لمن يصعدون الى حتفهم باسمين
وخوف الطغاة من الأغنيات
على هذه الأرض ما يستحق الحياة
على هذه الأرض سيدة الأرض
أم البدايات, أم النهايات
كانت تسمى فلسطين
صارت تسمى فلسطين
سيدتي...أستحق لأنك سيدتي
أستحق الحياة
ونحن نحب الحياة إذا ما استطعنا إليها سبيلا
ونرقص بين شهيدين. نرفع مئذنة للبنفسج بينهما أو نخيلا
نحب الحياة إذا ما استطعنا إليها سبيلا
ونسرق من دود القز خيطاً لنبني سماءً لنا ونُسيج هذا الرحيلا
ونفتح باب الحديقة كي يخرج الياسمين إلى الطرقات نهاراً جميلا
نحب الحياة إذا ما استطعنا إليها سبيلا
ونزرع حيث أقمنا نباتاً سريع النمو، ونحصد حيث أقمنا قتيلا
وننفخ في الناي لون البعيد البعيد، ونرسم فوق تراب الممر صهيلا
ونكتب أسماءنا حجراً حجراً، أيها البرق أوضح لنا الليل، أوضح قليلا
نحب الحياة إذا ما استطعنا إليها سبيلا
**English Translation:
"On This Earth"
We have on this earth what makes life worth living: April's hesitation, the aroma of bread
at dawn, a woman's point of view about men, the works of Aeschylus, the beginning
of love, grass on a stone, mothers living on a flute's sigh and the invaders' fear of memories.
We have on this earth what makes life worth living: the final days of September, a woman
keeping her apricots ripe after forty, the hour of sunlight in prison, a cloud reflecting a swarm
of creatures, the peoples' applause for those who face death with a smile, a tyrant's fear of songs.
We have on this earth what makes life worth living: on this earth, the Lady of Earth,
mother of all beginnings and ends. She was called Palestine. Her name later became
Palestine. My Lady, because you are my Lady, I deserve life.
from:
http://hedgeguard.blogspot.com/2006/0...
"We love life whenever we can"
We love life whenever we can.
We dance and throw up a minaret or raise palm trees for the violets growing between two martyrs.
We love life whenever we can.
We steal a thread from a silk-worm to weave a sky and a fence for our journey.
We open the garden gate for the jasmine to walk into the street as a beautiful day.
We love life whenever we can.
Wherever we settle we grow fast-growing plants, wherever we settle we harvest a murdered man.
We blow into the flute the colour of far away, of far away, we draw on the dust in the passage the neighing of a horse.
And we write our names in the form of stones. Lightning brighten the night for us, brighten the night a little.
We love life when ever we can.
Mahmoud Darwish, The award-winning Palestinian poet, has died aged 67, after heart surgery in a Texas hospital. Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland takes a look at a man who widely loved man by Palestinians and poetry-lovers alike.
Mahmoud Darwish
Mahmoud Darwish has long been recognized as the leading poet of Palestine, the poetic voice of the exiled Palestinian people. He was born in the Palestinian village of Birwe in 1942; Birwe was one of over 400 Palestinian villages occupied by the Israeli army in 1948. His family fled to Lebanon but returned to become "internal refugees" whose legal status was at best precarious, subject to Israeli military authorities. He was several times imprisoned and placed under house arrest in his 20s for reciting his poetry and for his activities as editor of the Israeli Communist Party's newspaper. In 1971 he left Israel (for 25 years, as it turned out), going first to Cairo, then to Beirut where he joined the Palestine Liberation Organization and became the editor of its literary, cultural, and scholarly journal Al-Karmel. He left Beirut following the Israeli invasion in 1982, living variously in Cyprus and Paris, among other places. He was chosen a member of the PLO Executive Committee in 1987, but resigned in 1993 over disagreement with the leadership regarding some elements of the Oslo Accords. After having been denied entry into Israel for a number of years, he was finally allowed to return in 1997 and settled in Ramallah.
His earliest poetry was largely traditional Arabic love poetry, but he soon turned to drawing upon the political and social situations he knew first hand; one of his earliest successful peoms (in the sense of becoming widely known among Palestinians) was "Identity Card," based on his own experiences as an "internal refugee" in Israel:
"Identity Card"
Put it on record.
I am an Arab
And the number of my card is fifty thousand
I have eight children
And the ninth is due after summer.
What's there to be angry about?
Put it on record.
I am an Arab
Working with comrades of toil in a quarry.
I have eight children
For them I wrest the loaf of bread,
The clothes and exercise books
From the rocks
And beg for no alms at your door,
Lower not myself at your doorstep.
What's there to be angry about?
Put it on record.
I am an Arab.
I am a name without a title,
Patient in a country where everything
Lives in a whirlpool of anger.
My roots
Took hold before the birth of time
Before the burgeoning of the ages,
Before cypress and olive trees,
Before the proliferation of weeds.
My father is from the family of the plough
Not from highborn nobles.
And my grandfather was a peasant
Without line or geneaology.
My house is a watchman's hut
Made of sticks and reeds.
Does my status satisfy you?
I am a name without a surname.
Put it on record.
I am an Arab.
Color of hair: jet black.
Color of eyes: brown.
My distinguishing features:
On my head the 'iqal cords over a keffiyeh
Scratching him who touches it.
My address:
I'm from a village, remote, forgotten,
It's streets without name
And all its men in the fields and quarry.
What's there to be angry about?
Put it on record.
I am an Arab.
You stole my forefathers' vineyards
And land I used to till,
I and all my children,
And you left us and all my grandchildren
Nothing but these rocks.
Will your government be taking them too
As is being said?
So!
Put it on record at the top of page one:
I don't hate people,
I trespass on no one's property.
And yet, if I were to become hungry
I shall eat the flesh of my usurper.
Beware, beware of my hunger
And of my anger!
(Translated by Denys Johnson-Davies)
Although there are suggestions of a threatened violence in the conclusion of "Identity Card," by and large Darwish has avoided appeals to violence as a solution; this is apparent in another early poem, one which is based on a conversation between Darwish and a young Israeli friend following the latter's participation in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War:
"A Soldier Dreams of White Tulips"
He dreams of white tulips, an olive branch, her breasts in evening blossom.
He dreams of a bird, he tells me, of lemon flowers.
He does not intellectualize about his dream. He understands things as he senses and smells them.
Homeland for him, he tells me, is to drink my mother's coffee, to return at nightfall.
And the land? I don't know the land, he said.
I don't feel it in my flesh and blood, as they say in the poems.
Suddenly I saw the land as one sees a grocery store, a street, newspapers.
I asked him, but don't you love the land? My land is a picnic, he said, a glass of wine, alove affair.
--Would you die for the land?
--No!
All my attachment to the land is no more than a sotry or a fiery speech!
They taught me to love it, but I never felt it in my heart.
I never knew its roots and branches, or the scent of its grass.
--And what about its love?Did it burn like suns and desire?
He looked straight at me and said: I love it with my gun.
And by unearthing feasts in the garbage of the past
and a deaf-mute idol whose age and meaning are unknown.
He told me about the moment of departure, how his mother
silently wept when they led him to the front,
how her anguished voice gave birth to a new hope in his flesh
that doves might flock through the Ministry of War.
He drew on his cigarette. He said, as if fleeing from a swamp of blood,
I dreamt of white tulips, an olive branch, a bird embracing the dawn on a lemon branch.
--And what did your see?
--I saw what I did:
a blood-red boxthorn.
I blasted them in the sand . . . in their chests . . . in their bellies.
--How many did you kill?
--It's impossible to tell. I only got one medal.
Pained, I asked him to tell me about one of the dead.
He shifted in his seat, fiddled with the folded newspaper,
then said, as if breaking into song:
He collapsed like a tent on stones, embracing shattered planets.
His high forehead was crowned with blood. His chest was empty of medals.
He was not a well-trained fighter, but seemed instead to be a peasant, a worker, or a peddlar.
Like a tent he collapsed and died, his arms stretched out like dry creek-beds.
When I searched his pockets for a name, I found two photographs, one of his wife, the other of his daughter.
Did you feel sad? I asked.
Cutting me off, he said, Mahmoud, my friend,
sadness is a white bird that does not come near a battlefield.
Soldiers commit a sin when they feel sad.
I was there like a machine spitting hellfire and death,
turning space into a black bird.
He told me about his first love, and later, about distant streets,
about reactions to the war in the heroic radio and the press.
As he hid a cough in his handkerchief I asked him:
Shall we meet again?
Yes, but in a city far away.
When I filled his fourth glass, I asked jokingly:
Are you off? what about the homeland?
Give me a break, he replied.
I dream of white tulips, streets of song, a house of light.
I need a kind heart, not a bullet.
I need a bright day, not a mad, fascist moment of triumph.
I need a child to cherish a day of laughter, not a weapon of war.
I came to live for rising suns, not to witness their setting.
He said goodbye and went looking for white tulips,
a bird welcoming the dawn on an olive branch.
He understands things only as he senses and smells them.
Homeland for him, he said, is to drink my mother's coffee, to return, safely, at nightfall.
(Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché)
The body of Darwish's work is most particularly concerned with articulating the effects on the Palestinian people of the loss of their homeland:
"Athens Airport"
Athens airport disperses us to other airports. Where can I fight? asks the fighter.
Where can I deliver your child? a pregnant woman shouts back.
Where can I invest my money? asks the officer.
This is none of my business, the intellectual says.
Where did you come from? asks the customs' official.
And we answer: From the sea!
Where are you going?
To the sea, we answer.
What is your address?
A woman of our group says: My village is my bundle on my back.
We have waited in the Athens airport for years.
A young man marries a girl but they have no place for their wedding night.
He asks: Where can I make love to her?
We laugh and say:
This is not the right time for that question.
The analyst says: In order to live, they die by mistake.
The literary man says: Our camp will certainly fall.
What do they want from us?
Athens airport welcomes its visitors without end.
Yet, like the benches in the terminal, we remain, impatiently waiting for the sea.
How many more years longer, O Athens airport?
(Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché)
The homeland which now exists for Palestinians is that land found in memory and the imagination:
"We Walk Towards a Land"
We walk towards a land not of our flesh,
Not of our bones its chestnut trees,
Its stones unlike the curly goats
Of the Song of Songs.
We walk towards a land
That does not hang a special sun for us.
Mythic women clap:
A sea around us,
A sea upon us.
If wheat and water doe not reach you,
Eat our love and drink our tears.
Black veils of mourning for the poets.
You have your victories and we have ours,
We have a country where we see
Only the invisible.
(Translated by Rana Kabbani)
In a very real sense, the lost homeland of Palestine becomes what defines those who have lost her, and she becomes identified with the "beloved" of traditional Arabic poetry:
"On This Earth"
We have on this earth what makes life worth living: April's hesitation, the aroma of bread
at dawn, a woman's point of view about men, the works of Aeschylus, the beginning
of love, grass on a stone, mothers living on a flute's sigh and the invaders' fear of memories.
We have on this earth what makes life worth living: the final days of September, a woman
keeping her apricots ripe after forty, the hour of sunlight in prison, a cloud reflecting a swarm
of creatures, the peoples' applause for those who face death with a smile, a tyrant's fear of songs.
We have on this earth what makes life worth living: on this earth, the Lady of Earth,
mother of all beginnings and ends. She was called Palestine. Her name later became
Palestine. My Lady, because you are my Lady, I deserve life.
(Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché)
For the Palestinian people, it is the fact of exile which is their defining characteristic:
"Without exile, who am I?"
Stranger on the bank, like the river . . . tied up to your
name by water. Nothing will bring me back from my free
distance to my palm tree: not peace, nor war. Nothing
will inscribe me in the Book of Testaments. Nothing,
nothing glints off the shore of ebb and flow, between
the Tigris and the Nile. Nothing
gets me off the chariots of Pharaoh. Nothing
carries me for a while, or makes me carry an idea: not
promises, nor nostalgia. What am I to do, then? What
am I to do without exile, without a long night
staring at the water?
Tied up
to your name
by water . . .
Nothing takes me away from the butterfly of my dreams
back into my present: not earth, nor fire. What
am I to do, then, without the roses of Samarkand? What
am I to do in a square that burnishes the chanters with
moon-shaped stones? Lighter we both have
become, like our homes in the distant winds. We have
both become friends with the clouds'
strange creatures; outside the reach of the gravity
of the Land of Identity. What are we to do, then . . . What
are we to do without exile, without a long night
staring at the water?
Tied up
to your name
by water . . .
Nothing's left of me except for you; nothing's left of you
except for me -- a stranger caressing his lover's thigh: O
my stranger! What are we to do with what's left for us
of the stillness, of the siesta that separates legend from legend?
Nothing will carry us: not the road, nor home.
Was this road the same from the start,
or did our dreams find a mare among the horses
of the Mongols on the hill, and trade us off?
And what are we to do, then?
What
are we to do
without
exile?
(Translated by Anton Shammas)
But Darwish's poetry reaches beyond the surface facts of Palestinian exile, especially in his later work where he explores the human experience, not just the Palestinian one, particularly in erotic and love poetry which probes the nature of love in a world in which we are all in a very real sense strangers and exiles:
"The Stranger Finds Himself in the Stranger"
We two are become one.
We have no name, strange woman,
when the stranger finds himself in the stranger.
What remains of the garden behind us is the power of the shadow.
Show what you will of your night's earth, and hide what you will.
We come hurriedly from the twilight of two places at once.
Together we searched for our addresses.
Follow your shadow, east of the Song of Songs,
herding sand grouse.
You will find a star residing in its own death.
Climb a deserted mountain,
you will find my yesterday coming full circle to my tomorrow.
You will find where we were and where, together, we will be.
We are two become one, strange man.
Go to the sea west of your book, and dive as lightly
as if you were riding two waves at birth,
you will find a thicket of seaweed and a green sky of water.
Dive as lightly as if you were nothing in nothing.
And you will find us together.
We are two become one.
We have yet to see how we were here, strange woman.
Two shadows opening and closing upon what had once been our two bodies.
A body appearing then disappearing in a body disappearing
in the confusion of unending duality.
We need to return to being two,
so we can go on embracing each other.
We have no name, strange woman,
when the stranger finds himself in the stranger.
(Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché)
Kilde: hedgeguard.blogspot.com
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